Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech executive who helped shape Google and YouTube, has died, her husband said. She was 56.
Wojcicki played a key role in Google’s creation and served nine years as YouTube's CEO, stepping down last year to focus on her "family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” she said at the time.
She was one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry.
Her collaboration with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin began shortly after they incorporated their search engine into a business in 1998. Wojcicki rented the garage of her Menlo Park, California, home to them for $1,700 a month, cementing a formative partnership. Page and Brin — both 25 at the time — continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki’s garage for five months before moving Google into a more formal office and later persuaded their former landlord to come work for their company.
Wojcicki joined Google, now known as Alphabet, as its marketing manager in 1999 and served in various positions as Google grew its online advertising presence by acquiring YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2008. 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.
“Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who looked up to her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a note to employees.
Former Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice president of Google's sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 before decamping to Facebook, said in a Facebook post that Wojcicki was formative in her tech career.
“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization at the beginning of my career in tech,” Sandberg wrote. “She was the person I turned to for advice over and over again. And she was this person for so many others too.”
Her husband, Dennis Troper, announced her death in a social media post late Friday.
“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,” he wrote.
“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.
No other details of her death were immediately provided.
Wojcicki and Troper’s 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died in February at the UC Berkeley campus where he resided as a freshman student.
FILE - YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki speakes during a conversation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on May 24, 2022. Her husband. Dennis Troper said in a statement on social media late Friday, AUg. 9, 2024 that Wojcicki, who was 56, died after suffering with small cell lung cancer for the past two years. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them.
Pagers used by hundreds of members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded near-simultaneously Tuesday in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least nine people, including an 8-year-old girl, and wounding more than 2,000. Hezbollah and the Lebanese government blamed Israel for what appeared to be a sophisticated remote attack.
The AR-924 pagers used by the militants were manufactured by BAC Consulting KFT, based in Hungary’s capital, according to a statement released Wednesday by Gold Apollo.
“According to the cooperation agreement, we authorize BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in designated regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC,” the statement read.
Gold Apollo chair Hsu Ching-kuang told journalists Wednesday that his company has had a licensing agreement with BAC for the past three years, but did not provide evidence of the contract.
At about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.
It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if non-Hezbollah members also carried any of the exploding pagers.
The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Experts believe explosive material was put into the pagers prior to their delivery and use in a sophisticated supply chain infiltration.
The AR-924 pager, advertised as being “rugged,” contains a rechargeable lithium battery, according to specifications once advertised on Gold Apollo’s website before it was apparently taken down Tuesday after the sabotage attack. It could receive text messages of up to 100 characters.
It also claimed to have up to 85 days of battery life. That’s something that would be crucial in Lebanon, where electricity outages have been common as the tiny nation on the Mediterranean Sea has faced years of economic collapse. Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones, making them more resilient in emergencies — one of the reasons why many hospitals worldwide still rely on them.
For Hezbollah, the militants also looked at the pagers as a means to counteract what’s believed to be intensive Israeli electronic surveillance on mobile phone networks throughout the country.
“The phone that we have in our hands — I do not have a phone in my hand — is a listening device,” warned Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in a February speech.
He later added: “I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent. It is a deadly agent, not a simple one. It is a deadly agent that provides specific and accurate information. Therefore, this requires great seriousness when confronting it.”
Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Apollo Gold, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Johnson Lai)
A police officer inspects a car in which a hand-held pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People gather outside the American University hospital after the arrival of several men who were wounded by exploded handheld pagers, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Bassam Masri)
Lebanese soldiers stand guard at a street that leads to the American University hospital where they bring wounded people whose handheld pager exploded, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
