Former YouTube Chief Susan Wojcicki Dies At 56

Former YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, one of Google’s earliest employees and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent women, has passed away at the age of 56 after two years of living with lung cancer, according to her husband.

“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 two years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” Dennis Troper wrote on Facebook.

Wojcicki was formative to the history of Google, providing the company’s headquarters for a time when she rented out her garage to its two founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as they built their search engine.

The following year Page and Brin convinced Wojcicki to leave her job at Intel and join them as Google’s marketing manager, its 16th employee.

Long tenure

“Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine,” Wojcicki recalled last year.

“Their names were Larry and Sergey. I saw the potential of what they were building, which was incredibly exciting, and although the company had only a few users and no revenue, I decided to join the team.”

Page and Brin stepped down from running Google and Alphabet back in December 2019.

Wojcicki became YouTube’s chief executive in 2014, leaving the role last year.

“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” she wrote at the time.

“I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved. It’s been exhilarating, meaningful, and all-consuming.”

‘Core’

Google and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai said Wojcicki was “core” to the company’s history.

“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,” he wrote on X/Twitter.

Wojcicki’s tenure at YouTube coincided with increased scrutiny of social media platforms for spreading misinformation and pressure on large tech platforms, including YouTube, over their allegedly illegal monopolies over various areas of the online world.

In January 2022, for instance, a group of more than 80 fact-checking organisations wrote an open letter to Wojcicki saying the platform was a “major conduit” of misinformation.