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)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Donald Trump's fourth scheduled stop in eight days in Wisconsin is a sign of his increased attention as Republicans fret about the former president's ability to match the Democrats' enthusiasm and turnout machine.
“In the political chatter class, they’re worried," said Brandon Scholz, a retired Republican strategist and longtime political observer in Wisconsin who voted for Trump in 2020 but said he is not voting for Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris this year. “I think Republicans are right to be concerned.”
Trump's latest rally was planned for 2 p.m. Central time Sunday in Juneau in Dodge County, which he won in 2020 with 65% of the vote. Jack Yuds, chairman of the county Republican Party, said support for Trump is stronger in his part of the state than it was in 2016 or 2020. “I can’t keep signs in,” Yuds said. “They want everything he’s got. If it says Trump on it, you can sell it.”
Wisconsin is perennially tight in presidential elections but has gone for the Republicans just once in the past 40 years, when Trump won the state in 2016. A win in November could make it impossible for Harris to take the White House.
Trump won in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton by fewer than 23,000 votes and lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes.
On Tuesday, Trump made his first-ever visit to Dane County, home to the liberal capital city of Madison, in an effort to turn out the Republican vote even in the state's Democratic strongholds. Dane is Wisconsin’s second most-populous and fastest-growing county; Biden received more than 75% of the vote four years ago.
“To win statewide you’ve got to have a 72-county strategy,” former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said at that event.
Trump’s campaign and outside groups supporting his candidacy have outspent Harris and her allies on advertising in Wisconsin, $35 million to $31 million, since she became a candidate on July 23, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.
Harris and outside groups supporting her candidacy had more advertising time reserved in Wisconsin from Oct. 1 through Nov. 5, more than $25 million compared with $20 million for Trump and his allies.
The Harris campaign has 50 offices across 43 counties with more than 250 staff in Wisconsin, said her spokesperson Timothy White. The Trump campaign said it has 40 offices in the state and dozens of staff.
Harris rallied supporters in Madison in September at an even that drew more than 10,000 people. On Thursday, she made an appeal to moderate and disgruntled conservatives by holding an event in Ripon, the birthplace of the Republican Party, along with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of Trump’s most prominent Republican antagonists.
Harris and Trump are focusing on Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the “blue wall” states that went for Trump in 2016 and flipped to Biden in the next election.
While Trump’s campaign is bullish on its chances in Pennsylvania as well as Sunbelt states, Wisconsin is seen as more of a challenge.
“Wisconsin, tough state,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita, who worked on Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s winning reelection campaign in 2022.
“I mean, look, that’s going to be a very tight — very, very tight, all the way to the end. But where we are organizationally now, comparative to where we were organizationally four years ago, I mean, it’s completely different,” LaCivita said.
He also cited Michigan as more of a challenge. “But again, these are states that Biden won and carried and so they’re going to be brawls all the way until the end and we’re not ceding any of that ground.”
The candidates are about even in Wisconsin, based on a series of polls that have shown little movement since Biden dropped out in late July. Those same polls also show high enthusiasm among both parties.
Mark Graul, who ran then-President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in Wisconsin, said the number of campaign visits speaks to Wisconsin’s decisive election role.
The key for both sides, he said, is persuading infrequent voters to turn out.
“Much more important, in my opinion, than rallies,” Graul said.
Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, and Jill Colvin in Butler, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign event at Dane Manufacturing, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in Waunakee, Wis. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Dane Manufacturing, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, in Waunakee, Wis. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign event Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, in Prairie du Chien, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
