Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who played a significant role in shaping Google and YouTube, has passed away at the age of 56, her husband announced.
Wojcicki was instrumental in Google’s early development and served as YouTube’s CEO for nine years before stepping down last year to focus on her “family, health, and personal projects,” as she stated at the time.
One of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry, Wojcicki’s journey with Google began when she rented her Menlo Park, California garage to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, shortly after they incorporated their search engine into a business. This partnership led to her joining Google as its marketing manager in 1999, where she played a key role in the company’s growth, including its acquisitions of YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2008. She later served as Google’s senior vice president of advertising and commerce before becoming YouTube’s CEO in 2014.
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai described Wojcicki’s death as a “devastating loss” for those who knew and loved her, for the many Googlers she led, and for the millions worldwide who benefited from her leadership and innovations.
Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who worked closely with Wojcicki during her time at Google, credited Wojcicki with shaping her tech career, calling her a trusted advisor and a mentor to many.
Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, shared the news of her death in a social media post, revealing that she had been living with non-small cell lung cancer for two years. He described her as not only a brilliant mind but also a loving mother and a dear friend to many.
Their 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, also passed away in February at the UC Berkeley campus where he was a freshman student.
No further details about Wojcicki’s death were provided.
