The death of establisher YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on Friday highweightlessed her key role in one of Silicon Valley’s most legfinishary origin stories.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin begined Google in 1998, they rented out Wojcicki’s Palo Alto garage to engage as a “worldexpansive headquarters.”
During a 2014 commencement speech at Johns Hopkins University, she portrayd the circumstances that led to the overweighteful decision. She shelp she was newly wed and equitable bought the hoengage, but could exposedly afford the mortgage. A mutual frifinish combinecessitate her with Page and Brin, who were still Stanford graduate students at the time.
“They seemed pleasant,” Wojcicki shelp. “Their idea sounded benevolent of crazy.”
While the name of their new company struck her as odd and she wasn’t certain what it unbenevolentt, none of that mattered at the time.
“As lengthy as you guys pay your rent on time, you guys can create your Googly skinnyg here,” she recalled alerting them.
Eventuassociate, she combinecessitate them in tardy-night sessions of eating pizza and M&Ms, she inserted, with the Google coestablishers talking about how their technology could alter the world—and how excited they were that the garage had a washer and parcheder.
According to Google, the company enbiged its toilspaces into the three small bedrooms on the ground floor as the staff grew to six people.
In 2018, to label the 20th anniversary of Google’s establishing, the company engaged archival footage to recreate what the garage seeed appreciate back in 1998.
The Street View team then posted images of each room, allothriveg watchers to virtuassociate allotigate the beginup’s distinct office space in all its cluttered glory.
The office also featured a piano keyboard for music shatters and a requisite ping pong table, though images show it was fbettered up and stashed in a corner.
In a 2018 video joining the recreated office, Wojcicki shelp, “Wow, it’s amazing to see it sees the same. It’s appreciate going back in time.”
Google also posted an distinct grainy video of the garage that was sboiling by the company’s sixth engageee, engineer Harry Cheung, who has since relocated on to become an angel allotor.
After touring the rooms with his camera, he spotted Page difficult at toil in front of a computer.
