Susan Wojcicki, the previous CEO of YouTube and some of the influential feminine executives in Silicon Valley, died on Friday, after two years of dwelling with lung most cancers the corporate introduced.
Wojcicki, who was 56, stepped down from CEO job at YouTube final 12 months after greater than twenty years main numerous components of Google and its Alphabet father or mother firm.
“Even as I write this it feels impossible to me that it’s true,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a be aware to staffers on Friday that was revealed on the corporate web site.
“Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who looked up to her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond.”
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 stop her job at chipmaker Intel and joined the fledgling search startup, turning into its first advertising supervisor in 1999. Over time, 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 immediately’s $2 trillion tech juggernaut.
The Wojcicki household turned generally known 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 trade, and was acknowledged in a 2012 Digital Studying Day by then U.S. Training Secretary Arne Duncan for utilizing expertise successfully within the classroom.
Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, who’s a director of product managment at Google, wrote in a Fb submit on Friday that Wojcicki had been dwelling with “non small cell lung cancer” for 2 years. “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,” Troper wrote.
As YouTube’s boss, Wojcicki oversaw some of the world’s largest media websites, with an viewers that streams multiple billion hours of video day-after-day. The video website, which Wojcicki pushed Google to accumulate in 2006, generated $8.7 billon in promoting income within the second quarter. In the course of the 9 years through which Wojcicki led YouTube as CEO, she turned the video website right into a dependable enterprise amid a altering market whereas additionally battling — not at all times 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.
“If you are dealing with a sensitive subject like news, health, science, we are going to make sure that what we’re recommending is coming from a trusted, well-known publisher that can be reliable,” she mentioned.
She additionally addressed necessary points involving ladies within the office, together with the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s ruling overturning of the Roe vs. Wade choice guaranteeing ladies the correct to abortion.
“My stance is that women should have a choice when they become a mother. I believe that’s really important. I believe that reproductive rights are human rights and to take away a law and a right that we’ve had for almost 50 years will be a big setback for women. But that’s my personal view,” she mentioned. “Running a company that really focuses on free speech, we want to make sure that we’re enabling a broad set of opinions that everyone has a right to express their point of view, provided they meet our community guidelines.”
