Susan Wojcicki, an early Google executive and long-time head of its YouTube video service who shaped how fortunes and fame are created on the internet, has died. She was 56.
Wojcicki died after a two-year battle with cancer, according to social media posts by her husband, Dennis Troper, and Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of YouTube parent Alphabet.
She announced plans in February 2023 to leave YouTube to focus on “my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about”. Neither she nor the company elaborated then on her health.
Wojcicki was among Google’s longest-serving employees and one of the highest-profile female executives in Silicon Valley. Few people had greater sway over the economics of the internet in the social media era.
From 2014 to 2023, she ran YouTube as chief executive, cementing the video service’s status as a daily destination for billions of people and a stage for countless performers to launch careers. Before that, Wojcicki spent years managing systems that let virtually any digital publisher cash in on advertisements – and placed Google firmly at the centre of the profitable enterprise.
But Wojcicki’s deeper influence came from her standing at Google, the unconventional search engine that transformed the web and Silicon Valley and is now part of Alphabet. Google’s first marketer and first landlord, she was trusted by company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, technical visionaries with little interest in management.
It was a familial bond. Wojcicki’s younger sister, Anne, founder of the genetics testing company 23andMe, was married to Brin for several years. Early Google staff nicknamed Wojcicki “mini-CEO” – a rare executive who had the ear of the often inscrutable Page and Brin.
“Susan is the true godmother of Google,” Keval Desai, an investor and former Google colleague, said when Wojcicki left YouTube. “She is a person who had a bigger impact than any of her titles would suggest.”
At YouTube, Wojcicki made for an unusual media titan. She was reserved in nature, and her infrequent public appearances showed little taste for Hollywood showmanship. Yet she pushed to promote independent creators – the thousands of broadcasters who split ad revenue with YouTube – and compete directly with television and streaming services.
Outside Google’s world, Wojcicki was largely unknown. Other female managers from its rapid-growth years, such as Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer, moved to top roles elsewhere and frequently graced magazine covers. Wojcicki was a reluctant public speaker with little public profile. A 2011 Mercury News article dubbed her “the most important Googler you’ve never heard of” and described her as a “soccer mom” who prized getting home every night for dinner with her children.
The mother of five was one of a few women at the top ranks of the tech industry. “She is an inspiration to many, especially us working mothers,” Priscilla Lau, a veteran YouTube manager, wrote when Wojcicki stepped down.
Her company also faced a litany of scandals involving conspiracies, propaganda, violent ideologies and irascible stars that fuelled a business crisis and turned the video platform into a battleground over speech, truth and internet governance. Wojcicki spent much of her tenure working to put safeguards in place and address concerns from sponsors, creators and regulators.
“We want to be on the right side of history,” she once told a key advertiser. – Bloomberg
