Susan Wojcicki, Former YouTube CEO, Passes Away at 56

Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube and a long-time executive at Google, passed away on Saturday at the age of 56 after a courageous two-year battle with lung cancer.

A Family’s Heartfelt Farewell:

“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after two years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” said Dennis Troper, Wojcicki’s husband, in a heartfelt Facebook post.

Despite facing personal challenges, Wojcicki remained committed to making the world a better place through her philanthropy. “Over the last two years, even as she dealt with great personal difficulties, Susan devoted herself to making the world better through her philanthropy, including supporting research for the disease that ultimately took her life,” Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

Pioneering Woman in Technology:

Wojcicki was one of the most prominent women in the tech industry. She joined Google in 1999 as one of its earliest employees and played a key role in the company’s growth long before Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

Leadership at YouTube:

Before becoming YouTube’s CEO in 2014, Wojcicki was the senior vice president for ad products at Google. Under her leadership, YouTube flourished into the world’s leading video platform.

After nine years at the helm, she stepped down in 2023 to focus on “family, health, and personal projects,” handing over the reins to Neal Mohan, her deputy, and a senior executive at Google.

Reflecting on a Remarkable Career:

In a blog post on the day she left YouTube, Wojcicki reflected on her journey: “Twenty-five years ago, I decided to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine.

Their names were Larry and Sergey… It would be one of the best decisions of my life,” she wrote, referring to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Today we at YouTube lost a teammate, mentor, and friend, Susan Wojcicki,” Neal Mohan shared in a post on X (formerly Twitter), capturing the deep impact of her loss on the tech community.