Aug. 10 (UPI) — Technology pioneer Susan Wojcicki, 56, died Friday in California after a two-year battle with lung cancer, her family announced.
Wojcicki is the former chief executive officer of YouTube and pioneer of online communications, including helping launch Google and YouTube.
Her husband, Dennis Troper, said Wojcicki suffered from non-small cell lung cancer for the past two years.
“Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life but a brilliant mind, a loving mother and a dear friend to many,” Troper said in a Facebook post.
“We are heartbroken but grateful for the time we had with her,” Troper said, adding that she had an “immeasurable” impact on her family and the world.
Wojcicki was “one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley” and enabled Google’s two founders to work out of her garage before she became one of the search engine giant’s early employees, CNN reported.
While working for Intel in 1998, Wojcicki rented out her garage to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who were graduate students at Stanford and in the process of developing the search engine.
Wojcicki saw Google’s potential, became its marketing manager and stayed with the tech firm for 25 years.
“Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend Susan Wojcicki after two years of living with cancer,” Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai said in a post on X. “She is a core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her.”
Wojcicki also served nine years as YouTube’s chief executive officer before resigning in 2023 to focus on her family, health and projects for which she was passionate.