11.08.2024, 08:02
Susan Wojcicki has died at the age of 56, she was the head of YouTube from 2014 to 2023 (screenshot: YouTube/ABC7 News Bay Area)
Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023 and previously a senior Google executive, has died at the age of 56. She had been battling lung cancer for the past two years.
“It is with deep sadness that I share the news of the death of Susan Wojcicki. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” her husband, Dennis Troper, wrote on Facebook.
One of the most prominent women in the technology industry
“Over the past two years, even as she faced significant personal hardships, Susan dedicated herself to making the world a better place through her philanthropic work, including supporting research into the disease that ultimately took her life,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.
Susan Wojcicki, one of the most prominent women in technology, joined Google in 1999 as employee No. 16. The company’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (who was married to her sister, Anne Wojcicki, from 2007 to 2015), initially operated the company out of her garage in Menlo Park, California, which Wojcicki rented to the duo before office space was secured.
In 2005, she led the launch of Google Video, and in 2006, she oversaw the company’s acquisition of YouTube, an upstart video streaming competitor, for $1.65 billion. She oversaw product management for AdSense and Google Book Search, as well as distribution for the company’s products. Before joining Google, she worked at Intel, Bain & Co. and RB Webber & Co.
Before Wojcicki became YouTube’s CEO in February 2014, she was senior vice president of advertising products at Google, becoming the company’s first female marketing director.
Susan Wojcicki had Polish roots
After nine years as YouTube CEO, she stepped down in 2023 to focus on “family, health, and personal projects.” She was replaced by her deputy, Neal Mohan. She has remained an advisor to the company.
Under Wojcicki’s leadership, Google launched YouTube TV, which by early 2024 had over 8 million customers and was the largest paid streaming TV service in the U.S. In late 2022, the company signed a seven-year, multi-billion-dollar deal with the NFL. In 2015, a Netflix-style service called YouTube Red debuted on the platform, featuring original shows and movies (but was later discontinued).
Susan Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968, in Santa Clara, California, to Esther and Stanley Wojcicki. Esther comes from a family of Russian Jews who came to New York in the 1930s. Born in Warsaw (as Stanisław), Stanley came to the United States after World War II at the age of 12, with his mother and brother. In 1998, Susan Wojcicki married Dennis Troper, who currently works at Google as a director of product management. In February of this year, their 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, was found dead in his dorm room at the University of California, Berkeley.
video-area="">
(MAC, 11.08.2024)
* If you find an error, select it and press Ctrl + Enter
