YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki speaks during a conversation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on May 24, 2022. Wojcicki has died, according to her husband, Dennis Troper in a statement posted on social media late Friday, Aug. 9, 2024. (AP File)
- Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said.
- She was one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry.
- "She was the person I turned to for advice over and over again," said Sheryl Sandberg.
Share
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.
Wojcicki played a key role in Google’s creation and served nine years as YouTube’s CEO, stepping down last year to focus on her “family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” she said at the time.
She was one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry.
Her collaboration with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began shortly after they incorporated their search engine into a business in 1998.
Google Started in Wojcicki’s Garage
Wojcicki rented the garage of her Menlo Park, California, home to them for $1,700 a month, cementing a formative partnership. Page and Brin — both 25 at the time — continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki’s garage for five months before moving Google into a more formal office and later persuaded their former landlord to come work for 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,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees.
Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president of Google’s sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 before decamping to Facebook, said in a Facebook post that Wojcicki was formative in her tech career.
“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization at the beginning of my career in tech,” Sandberg wrote. “She was the person I turned to for advice over and over again. And she was this person for so many others too.”
Her husband, Dennis Troper, announced her death in a social media post 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 wrote.
“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 said.
No other details of her death were immediately provided.
Wojcicki and Troper’s 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died in February at the UC Berkeley campus where he resided as a freshman student.
RELATED TOPICS:
Categories
IRS Is Drafting Plans to Cut as Much as Half of Its 90,000-Person Workforce, AP Sources Say
City of Fresno Lawsuit vs. Terance Frazier’s Nonprofit Hits a Snag
Supreme Court Seems Likely to Block Mexico’s $10 Billion Lawsuit Against US Gun Makers
NASA Astronauts Finally Closing in on Return to Earth After 9 Months in Space
Fresno County Driver Killed in Early Morning Highway 41 Crash, Found 6 Hours Later
Merced Police Bust Illegal Gambling Operation at Local Business
