Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has passed away at the age of 56, after living with lung cancer for two years, according to social media posts by her husband, Dennis Troper, and Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki 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” Troper said in a post on Saturday.
Pichai also shared his tribute to Wojcicki in a post on X, saying, “Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer”.
“She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world,” he added.
According to the Yale School of Medicine, non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer. A fact sheet associated with the university reports that 80 per cent of people diagnosed with the condition have already reached advanced stages because its symptoms are often mistaken for common illnesses.
It is the second tragedy in Wojcicki’s family, after her 19-year-old son Marco Troper died of a reported drug overdose at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a freshman.
Wojcicki joined Google in 1998 and was CEO of YouTube from February 2014 until February 2023, when she stepped down to focus on “family, health, and personal projects”.
Google generated multibillions of dollars of cash through YouTube under her leadership. The ad sales on YouTube generated $8.1 billion in revenue in 2023 – nearly 10 per cent of Alphabet’s total revenue.
Wojcicki was considered one of the most powerful women in the company, reporting directly to the company’s co-founders for most of her tenure.