Page and Brin started Google in her garage. She was employee #16 at the company. She was behind the Google logo, Google Doodles, Image Search, AdSense, then all of advertising, and ultimately YouTube.
Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her role. RIP.
> Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.
I'll say personally it's tragic to see someone like this pass in their 50s. Given Susan's impact on both Google as a whole and more specifically YouTube it's no understatement to say that she changed the world profoundly.
I don't think that YouTube, in its current form, or the creator economy that it produced, would exist in anywhere near the same shape had Google not acquired and then spent years funding the company at a financial loss.
Posted by Sundar Pichai.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/31/marco-t...
> Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.
My mom was one of her teachers and just told me “this is so sad, she was such a beautiful kid. She went on to do amazing things.”
Yes, she did.
definitely miss that now after the switch back to the faceless leadership, and saddened by the loss. condolences to the family.
lung cancer as well, I don't think she was a smoker so what a bad stroke of luck.
Interesting to mention about the Polgar sisters again [3].
Z''L.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-godmother-of-silicon-va...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Successful-People-Lessons/d...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
I'm not sure what to say about that anymore.
Fuck cancer.
Edit: some people misinterpreted my comment. I'm just one anonymous voice on the Internet, but am deeply saddened by the passing of Susan Wojcicki, who meant a lot to me as one of the many people who crossed paths with her professionally. I wish her family strength in a very trying moment. She did not deserve this. I've not met another business leader demonstrate everyday kindness to the degree that she did.
Her untimely passing is also a reminder to those of us who sometimes look up to such successful businesspeople that we should all appreciate our luck to be alive and enjoy it to the fullest, as I hope that she did as well, and as I'm sure that she'd prefer we did. RIP
Personally, I wish I had any control at all over YouTube Shorts.
Perhaps not as much of a 'technical' contributor to tech world, but one of the largest companies in the world started in her garage, she was an early employee and served in senior leadership for decades.
Not even a billion $ will protect you from America's problems with cancer and fentanyl. We need to fix this. I mean, just look at this chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...
Is it pesticides like this recent HN thread alludes to?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182121
Idk. But the US is uniquely doing something very wrong.
Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge creator monetization network, a music channel, an education platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.
It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.
Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.
I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world without it.
RIP.