Susan Wojcicki, the previous CEO of YouTube and probably the most influential feminine executives in Silicon Valley, died on Friday after two years of residing with lung most cancers, the corporate introduced.
Wojcicki, who was 56, stepped down from the CEO job at YouTube final 12 months after greater than 20 years main numerous elements of Google and its dad or mum firm Alphabet.
“Whilst I write this it feels not possible to me that it’s true,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a word to staffers on Friday that was printed on the corporate web site.
“Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the hundreds of Googlers she led through the years, and for tens of millions of individuals everywhere in the world who appeared as much as her, benefited from her advocacy and management, and felt the affect of the unimaginable issues she created at Google, YouTube, and past.”
Wojcicki was a key determine at Google from the corporate’s earliest days, when she rented her Palo Alto storage to founders Larry Web page and Sergey Brin. She quickly give up her job at chipmaker Intel and joined the fledgling search startup, changing into its first advertising and marketing supervisor in 1999. Through the years, she would oversee Google’s promoting enterprise and its video enterprise, taking part in a significant function within the firm’s transformation from startup into at the moment’s $2 trillion tech juggernaut.
The Wojcicki household grew to become referred to as one thing near Silicon Valley royalty. Wojcicki’s sister Anne, the founder and CEO of genetics testing firm 23andMe, was as soon as married to Google cofounder Brin. Her mom, Esther, based the journalism program at Palo Alto Excessive Faculty, within the cradle of the tech business, and was acknowledged in a 2012 Digital Studying Day by then U.S. Training Secretary Arne Duncan for utilizing know-how successfully within the classroom.
Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, who’s a director of product managment at Google, wrote in a Fb publish on Friday that Wojcicki had been residing with “non small cell lung most cancers” for 2 years. “Susan was not simply my greatest buddy and companion in life, however an excellent thoughts, a loving mom, and a pricey buddy to many,” Troper wrote.
As YouTube’s boss, Wojcicki oversaw one of many world’s largest media websites, with an viewers that streams greater than 1 billion hours of video daily. The video web site, which Wojcicki pushed Google to amass in 2006, generated $8.7 billon in promoting income within the second quarter. Through the 9 years wherein Wojcicki led YouTube as CEO, she turned the video web site right into a dependable enterprise amid a altering market whereas additionally battling — not all the time efficiently — the rampant unfold of disinformation.
In an interview with Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell on the 2022 World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Wojcicki mentioned the challenges of regulating the content material it publishes on the positioning and that it recommends to customers.
“In case you are coping with a delicate topic like information, well being, science, we’re going to be sure that what we’re recommending is coming from a trusted, well-known writer that may be dependable,” she mentioned.
She additionally addressed essential points involving ladies within the office, together with the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s ruling that overturned the Roe vs. Wade determination guaranteeing ladies the precise to abortion.
“My stance is that girls ought to have a alternative once they develop into a mom. I consider that’s actually essential. I consider that reproductive rights are human rights and to remove a legislation and a proper that we’ve had for nearly 50 years can be a giant setback for girls. However that’s my private view,” she mentioned. “Working an organization that basically focuses on free speech, we wish to be sure that we’re enabling a broad set of opinions that everybody has a proper to specific their standpoint, offered they meet our group pointers.”
