Susan Wojcicki, who became Google’s 16th employee, helped start the company out of her garage, later ran its advertising business and spent much of the last decade at the helm of YouTube, has died at age 56.
Image source: blog.google
She joined Google in 1998, served as YouTube CEO from February 2014 to February 2023, and stepped down to focus on “family, health and personal projects.” Wojcicki battled non-small cell lung cancer; earlier this year, her son Marco Troper passed away.
Susan Wojcicki helped build Google into one of the most important companies of the last two decades, and she helped make YouTube the platform where a new generation of celebrities is born. For a long time, Susan was considered one of the most powerful women in the company – for most of her tenure, she reported directly to the Google co-founders. Wojcicki personally convinced Google’s board of directors to buy YouTube.
She also helped build Google’s advertising business, co-developing AdSense and masterminding its 2007 takeover of DoubleClick, a deal believed to be crucial to building Google’s advertising empire. And now the company is defending its interests in litigation, where it is accused of monopolizing the digital advertising market.