Her husband announced that Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech businesswoman who helped develop Google and YouTube, has died. She was 56.
Wojcicki played a significant part in Google’s founding and served as YouTube’s CEO for nine years before stepping down last year to focus on her “family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” she stated.
Susan Wojcicki, Former YouTube CEO And Longtime Google Executive, Has Died At 56
She was a highly respected female executive in the male-dominated technology industry.
Her relationship with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began shortly after they established their search engine as a business in 1998. Wojcicki rented the garage of her Menlo Park, California, house to them for $1,700 monthly, establishing a fruitful collaboration. Page and Brin, 25 at the time, spent five months refining their search engine in Wojcicki’s garage before relocating Google into a more official office and eventually persuading their old landlord to join their company.
“Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who looked up to her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, letter sent to staff members.
Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of Google’s sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 before joining Facebook, claimed in a Facebook post that Wojcicki helped shape her tech career.
“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organisation at the beginning of my career in tech,” Sandberg said. “She was the person I went to for advise time and again. And she was the same person for so many others.”
Her husband, Dennis Troper, revealed her death on social media late Friday.
“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,” he posted 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,” Troper told me.
Susan Wojcicki, Former YouTube CEO And Longtime Google Executive, Has Died At 56
No other information about her demise was immediately revealed.
Marco Troper, the 19-year-old son of Wojcicki and Troper, died in February on the UC Berkeley campus, where he was a freshman.
SOURCE | AP
