Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies At 56

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’s creation and served nine years as YouTube’s CEO, stepping down last year to focus on her “family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” 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 Larry Page and Sergey Brin 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 — both 25 at the time — continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki’s garage for five months before moving Google into a more formal office and later persuaded their former landlord to come work for their company.

“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,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees.

Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president of Google’s sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 before decamping to Facebook, said in a Facebook post that Wojcicki was formative in her tech career.

“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization at the beginning of my career in tech,” Sandberg wrote. “She was the person I turned to for advice over and over again. And