Susan Wojcicki, 56, who was Google’s “godmother” and YouTube’s CEO from 2014 to 2023, died on August 9 in Santa Clara, California.

Google search engine was created in Susan’s garage – in 1998 she leased it to Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with whom they created the search engine technology. Later, Wojcicki resigned from her position at Intel for the newly created Google. In 1999, she became its sixteenth employee.

What is Wojcicki known for, how is she connected with the most popular services in the world and why is she called the “godmother” of Google and YouTube – read in the article 24 Channels.

Why did Voychytskyi die?

According to Dennis Troper’s husband and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Susan’s cause of death was lung cancer. The woman battled the disease for two years.

My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children left us today after living with non-small cell lung cancer for two years.
– Susan’s husband Dennis Troper wrote on Facebook.

In February 2023, Wojcicki announced plans to leave YouTube to focus on “family, health, and personal passion projects.” At the time, neither she nor the company would publicly disclose Susan’s health status.

Wojcicki was one of Google’s “seniors,” arguably the longest-tenured person at the company and one of Silicon Valley’s most famous executives.

Why was Susan nicknamed “godmother”?

Wojcicki was at the helm of YouTube from 2014 to 2023. During that time, the video service became popular with billions of users and thousands of music artists. And that’s her success; before YouTube, the woman who specialized in making money from ads was Google’s senior vice president of advertising.

Wojchytskyi and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are united not only by professional but also family ties. Susan’s younger sister Anne, founder of genetic testing company 23andMe, was married to Breen for several years. Because of her closeness to Page and Brin, Google’s leading employees called Susan a “mini-CEO.”

Susan is Google’s real godmother, the woman who wields more influence over the company than her nicknames suggest.
– investor and former Google employee Keval Desai said about Wojcicki.

“The Most Important Employee You’ve Never Heard Of”

Wojcicki was relatively unknown outside of Google and was not featured on magazine covers. A 2011 Mercury News article called her “the most important Googler you’ve never heard of” and described her as a “soccer mom” (North American slang for a woman who takes her children to sports clubs and competitions).

Susan Wojcicki / Photo: Getty Images

Susan, a mother of five, was one of the few women to hold senior positions in the tech industry.

“She is an inspiration to so many, especially us working moms,” YouTube’s Priscilla Lau wrote of Wojcicki.

We want to be on the right side of history
– once said Vojchytsky to the main advertiser of the service.

During Wojcicki’s tenure, the company faced a series of scandals related to conspiracy theories, propaganda, violent ideologies and showbiz. All of this turned the video service into a battleground. So Susan’s job was to resolve the issues of sponsors, writers and regulators and put protective mechanisms in place.

Childhood and Susan’s Best Decision

Susan Diane Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1968, in Santa Clara, California, in the quiet southern suburbs of what would soon become Silicon Valley. Her father, Stanley, who fled communist Poland when she was a child, taught physics at Stanford University, and her mother, Esther, worked as a journalist and teacher at Palo Alto High School. In addition to Anna, the Wojchytskys had another child: the younger Janet, who became an anthropologist and epidemiologist.

Susan told Britain’s Evening Standard in 2017 that parents encouraged their daughters to “have an interesting career, to do something meaningful”.

Susan later studied history at Harvard University, then worked as a photojournalist in India. Within a few years, she returned to California to earn a degree in economics and business before working as a marketing executive at Intel. While working there, she met Brin and Page, who were then PhD students at Stanford University looking for office space for their company, Google.com. Wojcicki had just bought a house in Menlo Park, a town north of Stanford. In 1998, she made room for Brin and Page in her garage, which became Google’s first office.

Google Garage / Photo: Visit San Jose

Ten years later, Wojcicki admits that she was initially skeptical of Google because it was overshadowed by well-known search engines like Yahoo and AltaVista. Google quickly proved her wrong. She called renting out her garage “one of the best decisions of my life.”

Susan joined the company in 1999 as its first marketing manager, but Breen and Page did not give her the budget to promote their site.

“It was a little weird,” he recalled years later.

New times – new needs: How Susan developed YouTube

“People want to see other people from all over the world,” Wojcicki told The New York Times in 2014. “They love their TV and their shows, but they’re also interested in different new writers.”

After becoming CEO of the video service, Susan focused YouTube on premium advertising, music, and kids’ programming, which helped YouTube reach its goal of one billion hours of daily viewing. However, some plans fell through due to political issues. The service has been used by Islamist extremists in particular to spread propaganda and broadcast gruesome footage of executions.

Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016, YouTube has been repeatedly criticized for recommendation algorithms that have made viewers addicted to misinformation and fake news. YouTube has faced boycotts from advertisers and stars. In 2019, the US government sued YouTube for violating children’s online privacy laws.

Wojcicki has spent years tackling the issues, and it’s paying off. YouTube ad sales are set to more than triple between 2017 and 2022, reaching $29.2 billion. While controversial content still appears on YouTube, and Russia has even attempted to block the service, this only underscores its importance in the online world.