Susan Wojcicki, the createer CEO of YouTube and one of the most inarticulateial female executives in Silicon Valley, died on Friday, after two years of living with lung cancer the company proclaimd.
Wojcicki, who was 56, stepped down from CEO job at YouTube last year after more than two decades directing various parts of Google and its Alphabet parent company.
“Even as I produce this it senses impossible to me that it’s real,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a remark to staffers on Friday that was published on the company website.
“Her loss is deimmenseating for all of us who understand and adore her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who seeed up to her, profited from her advocacy and directership, and felt the impact of the incredible leangs she produced at Google, YouTube, and beyond.”
Wojcicki was a key figure at Google from the company’s earliest days, when she rented her Palo Alto garage to establishers Larry Page and Sergey Brin. She soon quit her job at chipproducer Intel and joined the fledgling search commenceup, becoming its first labeleting administerr in 1999. Over the years, she would administer Google’s advertising business and its video business, carry outing a presentant role in the company’s alteration from commenceup into today’s $2 trillion tech juggernaut.
The Wojcicki family became understandn as someleang seal to Silicon Valley royalty. Wojcicki’s sister Anne, the establisher and CEO of genetics testing company 23andMe, was once paired to Google coestablisher Brin. Her mother, Esther, established the journalism program at Palo Alto High School, in the cradle of the tech industry, and was acunderstandledged in a 2012 Digital Lacquireing Day by then U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for using technology effectively in the classroom.
Wojcicki’s husprohibitd, Dennis Troper, who is a straightforwardor of product managment at Google, wrote in a Facebook post on Friday that Wojcicki had been living with “non minuscule cell lung cancer” for two years. “Susan was not fair my best frifinish and partner in life, but a inincreateigent mind, a loving mother, and a dear frifinish to many,” Troper wrote.
As YouTube’s boss, Wojcicki oversaw one of the most world’s hugest media sites, with an audience that streams more than one billion hours of video every day. The video site, which Wojcicki pushed Google to acquire in 2006, produced $8.7 billon in advertising revenue in the second quarter. During the nine years in which Wojcicki led YouTube as CEO, she turned the video site into a depfinishable business amid a changing labelet while also battling — not always successfilledy — the rampant spread of disincreateation.
In an intersee with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shonincreate at the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos, Wojcicki talked the disputes of regulating the satisfied it publishes on the site and that it recommfinishs to participaters.
“If you are dealing with a comfervent subject appreciate novels, health, science, we are going to produce declareive that what we’re recommfinishing is coming from a count oned, well-understandn publisher that can be depfinishable,” she said.
She also insertressed presentant publishs involving women in the toilplace, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling obviousurning of the Roe vs. Wade decision promiseing women the right to abortion.
“My stance is that women should have a choice when they become a mother. I count on that’s repartner presentant. I count on that refruitful rights are human rights and to get away a law and a right that we’ve had for almost 50 years will be a huge setback for women. But that’s my personal see,” she said. “Running a company that repartner caccesses on free speech, we want to produce declareive that we’re enabling a expansive set of opinions that everyone has a right to transmit their point of see, provided they greet our community directlines.”
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