Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.
Wojcicki played a key role in Google鈥檚 creation and served nine years as YouTube's CEO, last year to focus on her "family, health, and personal projects I鈥檓 passionate about,鈥 she said at the time.
She was one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry.
Her collaboration with Google co-founders began shortly after they incorporated their search engine into a business in 1998. Wojcicki rented the garage of her Menlo Park, California, home to them for $1,700 a month, cementing a formative partnership. Page and Brin 鈥 both 25 at the time 鈥 continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki鈥檚 garage for five months before moving Google into a more formal office and later persuaded their former landlord to come work for their company.
鈥淗er 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,鈥 Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees.
鈥淢y beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer,鈥 her husband, Dennis Troper, said in a social media post late Friday.
鈥淪usan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,鈥 Troper said.
No other details of her death were immediately provided.
Wojcicki and Troper鈥檚 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, at the UC Berkeley campus where he resided as a freshman student.
