Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO and longtime Google executive, has died at 56

Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. 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. 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. Wojcicki joined Google, now known as Alphabet, as its marketing manager in 1999 and served in various positions as Google grew its online advertising presence by acquiring YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2008. “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. 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. 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. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/former-youtube-ceo-longtime-google-executive-susan-wojcicki-112736024