Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube CEO and long-time Google executive, passed away on Saturday at 56 following a two-year struggle with lung cancer.
In a Facebook post, Dennis Troper, Wojcicki’s husband, expressed his deep sorrow: “It is with profound sadness that I announce Susan’s passing. My cherished wife of 26 years and mother of our five children has left us after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai also paid tribute to Wojcicki, noting in a blog post, “Despite her personal challenges over the past two years, Susan remained committed to improving the world through her philanthropy, including funding research for the illness that eventually took her life.”
Wojcicki was a trailblazer in the tech industry, joining Google in 1999 as one of its earliest employees, long before the company acquired YouTube.
In 2006, Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, and Wojcicki became YouTube’s CEO in 2014 after serving as Google’s senior vice president of ad products.
She stepped down from her role at YouTube in 2023 to focus on family, health, and personal projects, with Neal Mohan, her deputy, taking over her position. Wojcicki had planned to transition to an advisory role at Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Reflecting on her decision to join Google, Wojcicki had written in a blog post, “Choosing to join Larry and Sergey, Stanford grads building a new search engine, was one of the best decisions of my life.”
Neal Mohan honored her memory, stating on X, “Today we at YouTube lost a teammate, mentor, and friend, Susan Wojcicki.”