CBS News
Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, dies at 56 after cancer battle
Susan Wojcicki, who served as CEO of YouTube for nine years and was one of Google’s first hires, died on Friday at age 56 after a battle with cancer, her family announced.
Wojcicki’s husband, Dennis Troper, announced her death in a post on Friday evening on Facebook.
“It is with profound sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki passing. 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,” Troper wrote in the post. “Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many. Her impact on our family and the world was immeasurable.”
“We are heartbroken, but grateful for the time we had with her. Please keep our family in your thoughts as we navigate this difficult time,” he added.
Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 as the company’s 16th employee, becoming the search engine’s first marketing executive. She helped launch Google Video and oversaw the company’s 2006 purchase of YouTube, a then-fledgling rival video-upload site, Variety reported.
She was named CEO of YouTube in 2014 and led the video-sharing platform through immense growth. She stepped down in February 2023 to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects.”
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan paid tribute to his predecessor in a post on social media.
“I had the good fortune of meeting Susan 17 years ago … I am forever grateful for her friendship and guidance,” Mohan wrote in part. “I am forever grateful for her friendship and guidance. I will miss her tremendously. My heart goes out to her family and loved ones.”
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a post on that he was “unbelievably saddened by the loss” of Wojcicki.
“She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her.” Pichai wrote. “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.”
Wojcicki was born on July 5, 1989 in Santa Clara, California. Her father, Stanley Wojcicki, was a physics professor at Stanford and her mother, Esther Wojcicki, was a teacher. She attended Harvard University and earned a masters degree in economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She received an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Wojcicki is survived by her husband and four children. Her son Marco, 19, died of a drug overdose at UC Berkeley in February.
Workers removing tree branches near a historic cathedral in Chelm, Poland, unearthed something unexpected when they came upon two children’s skeletons in a shallow burial pit where no gravesites are marked, the government’s Culture Ministry said.
Neither skeleton was buried in a coffin and one of the children was buried with the characteristics of an anti-vampire burial, Dr. Stanisława Gołuba, the archaeologist leading the research, said in a Facebook post. The child’s head was separated from its body, the post said, and the skull was facing down into the ground arranged on a stone. This, plus the way the skeletons were oriented, appears to be consistent with ancient burial methods used to prevent a person thought to be a demonic entity from exiting the grave, Gołuba said.
The skeletons appeared to be from the Early Middle Ages.
The children’s skeletons were removed from their graves, documented and waiting for further analysis, the statement said.
It’s the most recent in a series of findings in Poland of remains buried in ways that suggest people at the time believed they were dealing with vampires or other supernatural entities.
In 2022, Polish researchers found the remains of a woman at a gravesite in the village of Pień with a sickle around her neck and a triangular padlock on her foot. According to ancient beliefs, the padlock was supposed to prevent a deceased person thought to be a vampire from returning from the dead. The sickle was thought to cut the neck if the corpse tried to rise from the grave.
Professor Dariusz Polinski of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun said this type of practice became common throughout Poland in the 17th century in response to a reported vampire epidemic. In addition to practices with a sickle, sometimes corpses were burned, smashed with stones or had their heads and legs cut off.
Six so-called “vampire skeletons” were also found at a cemetery in northwest Poland in 2013. Each was buried with either a sickle laid across their necks or stones placed beneath their jaws said Lesley Gregoricka of the University of South Alabama who led the research team.
contributed to this report.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
