Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO and longtime Google executive, dies at 56

Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering technology executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.

Wojcicki played a key role in founding Google and served as YouTube’s CEO for nine years before stepping down last year to focus on “family, health, and personal projects that I’m passionate about,” she said at the time.

She was one of the most respected women executives in the male-dominated technology industry.

Her collaboration with Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began shortly after they incorporated their search engine into the company in 1998. Wojcicki rented a garage in Menlo Park, California, where they lived for $1,700 a month, solidifying their partnership. Page and Brin—both 25—spent five months honing their search engine in Wojcicki’s garage before moving Google to a more formal office and later persuading their former owner to come and work for the company.

Wojcicki joined Google, now Alphabet, in 1999 as a marketing manager and held various positions as Google expanded its online advertising presence with the acquisitions of YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2008. She served as senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google from 2011 to 2014 and as general manager of YouTube from 2014 to 2023.

“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 the millions of people around the world who admired her, benefited from her support and leadership, and were impacted by the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a note to employees.

Sheryl Sandberg, a former Facebook COO who served as vice president of sales and operations at Google from 2001 to 2008 before joining Facebook, wrote in a Facebook post that Wojcicki was just the beginning of her tech career.

“She taught me about business and helped me navigate a growing, somewhat chaotic organization early in my tech career,” Sandberg wrote. “She was the person I turned to for advice time and time again. And she was that person for many others.”

Her husband, Dennis Troper, announced her death Friday evening in a post on social media.

“My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children left us today after two years of living with non-small cell lung cancer,” he wrote.

“Susan was not only my best friend and life partner, but also a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a close friend to many people,” said the Troper.

No other details about her death were released.

Marco Troper, the 19-year-old son of Wojcicki and Troper, died in February on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, where he was living as a freshman.