Anika Begay
Tragedy has struck a famous Silicon Valley family again. Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has died, according to social media posts by her husband, Dennis Troper, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. She was 56.
Troper wrote on Facebook Friday evening, “It is with deep sadness that I share the news of the passing of Susan Wojcicki. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non-small cell lung cancer.”
“Susan was not only my best friend and life partner, but also a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable. We are saddened, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time.”
Incredibly saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as central to Google’s story as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, a leader, and a friend who had a tremendous…
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) August 10, 2024
Non-small cell lung cancer is one of the two main types of lung cancer and the most common type, according to Yale School of Medicine. Because its symptoms are often confused with common diseases, 80 percent of people diagnosed with the condition have already progressed to advanced stages, according to a fact sheet associated with the university.
Wojcicki and Troper had separately suffered a heartbreaking loss in February of this year, when their 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died of an accidental overdose in his dorm room at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a freshman.
Wojcicki rose to fame as the CEO of YouTube, a role she held for nine years before stepping down in early 2023, saying in a blog post at the time that she had “decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, my health, and personal passion projects.”
Wojcicki was among the first 20 employees of Google, which then acquired YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion, a figure that seemed astronomical at the time. She famously began working with the company after renting the garage of her home in Menlo Park, California, to friends Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were then Stanford doctoral students. (Google underwent a restructuring in 2015, at which point Alphabet became its parent company.)
According to reports over the years, it was after observing YouTube’s initial success that Wojcicki, then Google’s chief marketing officer, proposed to Page and Brin that Google purchase the video streaming platform.
Under his leadership, YouTube has become a multibillion-dollar moneymaker for Google. In 2023, YouTube reported $8.1 billion in revenue from advertising sales, nearly 10% of Alphabet’s total revenue.
Wojcicki’s family has deep ties to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area more broadly. One of her sisters is Anne Wojcicki, the CEO of 23andMe. Another sister, Janet, is a professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Meanwhile, her mother Esther Wojcicki is a renowned educator who has written extensively about raising successful children.
