Former YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki, Dies At The Age Of 56
Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube CEO, passed away at the age of 56. She was a long-time Google executive and has been battling against lung cancer for the past two years.
Dennis Troper, husband of the former YouTube CEO said in a post on Facebook, “It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki’s passing. My 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”.
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Her husband declared that she was his best friend and a great mother to her kids. She was the best life partner one could ever ask for as she not only had a brilliant mind but had a kind heart as well, he added.
He further brought up that she still would have a great impact on their family each day for the rest of their lives as she has ingrained some values and principles that would remain with us forever. Troper requested everyone to keep her and his family in their prayers to handle these difficult times.
The current Google Chief Executive mentioned that she had been struggling with “great personal difficulties” for the past two years. The Chief Executive, Sundar Pichai, stated that she was devoted to making the world a better place with her philanthropic views. She always wanted to support the research for her disease that “ultimately took her life”, he sadly added.
Life of the former YouTube CEO
Ms Wojcicki was a dedicated businesswoman of Silicon Valley who joined the tech industry in 1999 with her entry to Google. She was one of the first few employees, the sixteenth, who assisted the company in becoming the web search leader, even after it acquired YouTube. She gave 25 years of her life to Google.
The Youtube acquisition happened in 2006 for $1.65 billion. She became the CEO of Youtube at that time, before which she was the senior vice president for Google ad products. She remained YouTube’s CEO for nine years.
She was forced by her illness to step down from the prominent position she was holding at that moment in the company. She only wanted to focus on her health and personal as well as family priorities. Her place was taken by Neal Mohan who was her deputy previously. Neal Mohan joined the company in 2008 as an advertising and product executive for Google.
Mr Mohan posted a sad message on X, “Today we at YouTube lost a teammate, mentor, and friend, Susan Wojcicki”.
Eventually, the former YouTube CEO made the decision to join Alphabet, the parent company of Google, as an advisor. After leaving YouTube, she wrote a blog post outlining her initiatives, “Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduates who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey…It would be one of the best decisions of my life”.
Miss Wojocicki wanted more girls to come into this field as the future is to become more “digital”. She said that women should come forward in the industry as they already have very few. Even after taking many girls from technical degree universities, still, this remained a very small quota, according to Miss Wojocicki.
According to the Yale School of Medicine, the symptoms of non-small cell lung cancer are comparable to those of common ailments. 80 per cent of the people are not diagnosed properly, which leads them to the advanced stage of the disease, leaving them untreatable. However, it is among the most prevalent types of cancer.
