Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies at 56

The unassuming house connected Santa Margarita Avenue successful Menlo Park, California, had been bare for lone a mates of years erstwhile I visited successful 2008, but the ghosts were inactive there. This was wherever Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google a decennary previous. Here was the store erstwhile packed with recently delivered servers and routers; determination were the carpeted rooms astatine the backmost of the location wherever Page, Brin, and their archetypal worker Craig Silverstein churned retired code; retired the model was the backyard with the blistery tub.

In Google’s infancy the location belonged to a young couple, Dennis Troper and Susan Wojcicki, who had precocious purchased it for $615,000. To assistance with the mortgage, the Google duo paid them $1,700 a period to rent unused space. “They entered done the garage,” Wojcicki aboriginal told me. “They weren’t allowed to participate the beforehand door.”

Wojcicki recovered herself hanging retired with the young founders and became fascinated by the emergence of the hunt startup. She soon joined it herself, astir the clip the 15-person institution moved retired of her location and into an existent office, implicit a bicycle store successful Palo Alto. In 2002, she took implicit the Google advertizing arm, yet heading a multibillion dollar concern that transformed the full industry. In 2014, she became CEO of the company's video merchandise YouTube, moving 1 of the world’s biggest media properties and navigating it done competitions with different societal networks and crises of contented moderation. Though she was 1 of the astir almighty women successful each of business, she played it low-key, adjacent to her departure successful February 2023, “to commencement a caller section focused connected my family, health, and idiosyncratic projects I’m passionate about,” as she wrote successful the institution blog.

That aforesaid low-key ethic persisted successful her hard last years, wherever she privately battled non-small compartment lung cancer. On Friday, Troper said that Susan Wojcicki died astatine 56.

In a institution known for head-scratching quirks, absurd ambitions, and splashy profiles, Wojcicki someway ducked the biggest spotlights portion taking connected gargantuan responsibilities. Even earlier Eric Schmidt became Google’s CEO and became known arsenic the big successful the room, Wojcicki was a calm, analytical beingness whose omniscient counsel and dependable enactment ethic qualified her for the company’s astir captious roles, adjacent arsenic Google, aboriginal named Alphabet, grew to 1 of the world’s astir almighty companies. In the earliest days, her acquisition pedigree–including a grade astatine Harvard and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management astatine UCLA—as good arsenic her Intel experience, made her a comparative seasoned compared to the peach-fuzzers successful charge. She was besides virtually a subordinate of the family, aft cofounder Brin joined her sister Ann (they divorced successful 2015).

Well earlier Schmidt’s arrival, Wojcicki was progressive successful steering Google towards profitability. “There was a modulation wherever we realized that we could marque a batch much wealth from the advertising, arsenic opposed to syndicating hunt connected the web,” she told maine successful 2008, successful an interrogation for my past of the company.