The unsuspecting garage home that gave birth to one of the most powerful companies ever built – as it’s owner dies aged 56 following tragic final year

Susan Wojcicki rented out the space in her garage at her home in Menlo Park to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who built the iconic search engine there in 1998.

The historic move was one of good faith – made by a woman who would eventually surface as the firm’s longest-serving employee, and one of the highest-profile female Silicon Valley executives to date.

At the time, the search engine was just a prospect –  but Wojcicki was so excited by the potential of Brin and Page’s plans, she quit her marketing job at Intel on the spot.

She did so just for a chance to join them – paving the way for a historic career that came to a premature close this week. She died Friday after a bout with cancer that lasted more than two years, months after losing her son to a drug overdose.

First, though, she would make a move she would later call ‘one of the best decisions of my life’ – big words from a woman who had the foresight to urge Brin and Page to buy a then-burgeoning YouTube less than a decade later. 

She stepped down as the site’s chief last year, after seeing it grow some 240 times in value. Not bad, for someone savvy enough to see the potential in the only other site bigger than YouTube in the entire world – before both were even a thing.

The move was one of good faith – made by a woman who would eventually surface as the firm’s longest-serving employees, and one of the highest-profile female Silicon Valley executives to date. The then-YouTube CEO is seen here during a keynote presentation in Switzerland in 2022

She wrote in February upon announcing her intent to leave the company after nine years as CEO: ‘Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine.

‘Their names were Larry and Sergey,’ she said.

‘I saw the potential of what they were building, which was incredibly exciting, and although the company had only a few users and no revenue, I decided to join the team. 

‘It would be one of the best decisions of my life,’ she proclaimed – before touching on some of her accomplishments since joining the then-startup as its 16th employee in 1998.

‘Over the years, I’ve worn many hats and done so many things: managed marketing, co-created Google Image Search, led Google’s first Video and Book search, as well as early parts of AdSense’s creation,’ she wrote.

‘[I] worked on the YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions, served as SVP of Ads, and for the last nine years, the CEO of YouTube.  

‘I took on each challenge that came my way because it had a mission that benefited so many people’s lives around the world,’ she continued.

‘I’m so proud of everything we’ve achieved. It’s been exhilarating, meaningful, and all-consuming.

She concluded: ‘Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.’

At the time, the search engine was just a prospect – but Wojcicki was so excited by the potential of Brin and Page’s plans, she quit her marketing job at Intel on the spot

She rented out her Palo Alto garage at the price of $1,700 a month for Brin and Page to use as a ‘worldwide headquarters’

Wojcicki would later call ‘one of the best decisions of my life’ – big words from a woman who had the foresight to urge Brin and Page to buy YouTube less than a decade later. Today, the site is second only to Google, and is worth hundreds of billions of dollars by itself

Unbeknownst to others, she was secretly suffering from lung cancer. A year later, Wojcicki’s 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, was found dead in his dorm room at the University of California, Berkeley.  

His death was deemed an overdose, from consuming a high amount of alprazolam – the key drug in Xanax – cocaine, amphetamine, and the antihistamine hydroxyzine.

At the time, Esther Wojcicki, the mother of the former YouTube CEO, said the family was ‘devastated beyond comprehension’ by the loss of Marco – one of Wojcicki’s five children with Google director of product management Dennis Troper.

Yesterday, Troper issued his own statement to confirm his wife of 26 years had passed after living with ‘non small cell lung cancer’ for the past two years.

‘Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable.’

Similar sentiments were offered by figures such as Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president of Google’s sales and operations from 2001 to 2008.

She credited Wojcicki with being a driving force in her own career, as current Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai conceded it will be ‘hard to imagine the world without her.’

Brin and Page relinquished their own roles within the company in 2019, a few years after abruptly renaming and structuring the firm now known as Alphabet.

‘As long as you guys pay your rent on time, you guys can build your Googly thing here,’ she recalled telling them. Larry Page (L) and Sergey Brin (R)

Current Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai (left) said it will be ‘hard to imagine the world without [Wojcicki]’, considering the impact she has had on the tech sphere

Such statements highlighted Wojcicki’s key role in one of Silicon Valley’s most legendary origin stories, which began in her garage at her then-new home in Menlo Park. 

This would become Google’s first office, where she would push for prospects like getting Google inside colleges and a redesign of the firm’s now seminal logo – removing its early-days exclamation mark. 

Her most important project, as she mentioned in her farewell statement in 2023, was AdSense – tech that serves users advertisements based on the content of the websites they visit, as well as geographical location and other focused factors.

Paul Buchheit, the founder of Gmail, was credited with having the idea to run ads within Google’s email service, but in a 2011 piece published by Mercury News, he and others said it was Wojcicki, with the backing of Brin, who organized the team that adapted that idea into a successful product.

The piece was aptly titled, ‘Susan Wojcicki, the most important Googler you’ve never heard of, and reiterated how she rented out her Palo Alto garage at the price of $1,700 a month for Brin and Page to use as a ‘worldwide headquarters.’

Footage from the makeshift office shared by Google in 2018 showed Page hard at work there on a computer.

In 2018, the company used archival footage to recreate what the garage looked like back in 1998, spurring Wojcicki to remark, ‘Wow, it’s amazing to see it looks the same. It’s like going back in time.’

It turned out to be one of the best, shrewdest business moves in recent history, and cemented Wojcicki’s status as a tech titan

it was Wojcicki, with the backing of Brin (seen with Page in 2004), who organized the team that adapted Google’s AdSense into a successful product. Today, the program is one of Google’s most lucrative endeavors

From there, she would continue to serve as the firm’s marketing manager before taking on various other positions as Google quickly grew – soon acquiring YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2007, both largely at her behest.

At the time, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. Today, the video-sharing site is one of the world’s most valuable media companies – worth at least $455 billion on its own, Bloomberg reported last month.

Few had the foresight to buy YouTube as clearly as Wojcicki, those familiar with the matter has said – with Shark Tank judge Mark Cuban famously characterizing the move as ‘moronic’ at the time.

It turned out to be one of the best, shrewdest business moves in recent history, and cemented Wojcicki’s status as a tech titan.

By the time she stepped down, the site had grown to more than 2.5billion monthly active users while securing some $30billion in revenue a year just from ads, and is the second-most visited website in the world.

The first, to no one’s surprise, is Google – with today’s version of both sites widely seen as the fruits of Wojcicki’s labor and her own expertise.

Neither would have been possible without the garage, however, which after the 2006 acquisition of YouTube was bought by Google as well to be used as a landmark. 

 Wojcicki’s death comes just months after her son Marco Troper died from a drug overdose

It still stands today – one of many lasting reminders of Wojcicki’s somewhat unequaled legacy.

During a 2014 commencement speech at Johns Hopkins University, she described the circumstances that led to the decision to rent it out, remembering how she and her then-new husband were struggling to afford their mortgage.

A mutual friend then introduced the pair to Brin and Page, she said.

‘They seemed nice,’ Wojcicki told attendees a decade ago. ‘Their idea sounded kind of crazy.’ 

‘As long as you guys pay your rent on time, you guys can build your Googly thing here,’ she recalled telling them.

And the rest, well, is history. 

She served as Google’s senior vice president of advertising and commerce from 2011 to early 2014 and CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023.