Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube whose California garage is where Google was born, has died. She was 56.
Wojcicki’s husband, Google executive Dennis Troper, shared Friday on Facebook that the tech trailblazer died following a two-year battle with non small cell lung cancer.
“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer,” Troper wrote on Facebook. “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time.”
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, paid tribute to Wojcicki on X.
“Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her,” he tweeted. “She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.”
It was back in 1998 when Wojcicki rented out her garage in California in order to help pay her mortgage. She rented it to Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who set up shop and launched the search engine that would ultimately become Google. Brin even married Wojcicki’s sister, 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki from 2007 to 2015.
Wojcicki was four months pregnant with her first child when she left her stable job at Intel Corp. to join the start-up Google in 1999, becoming the company’s 16th employee. While many of her close friends and colleagues called the move crazy, Wojcicki would later call it one of the best decisions of her life.
She quickly moved up the ranks and became Google’s senior vice president of advertising and commerce, and she’s largely credited with coming up with Google Images and Google Books. After Google bought YouTube in 2006 for a whopping $1.65 billion, Wojcicki was installed as the platform’s CEO.
Wojcicki attended Harvard University where she studied history and literature. She later earned her master’s degree in economics at UC Santa Cruz and an MBA at UCLA.Â
Wojcicki is survived by her husband and five children.
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