For a lot of hundreds of thousands around the globe, Susan Wojcicki was an individual who was a tech govt on the extent of a Steve Jobs or a Steve Wozniak, individuals who constructed multibillion greenback companies out of their properties.
For Wojcicki, the chance got here when she rented her empty storage to a pair of younger males named Sergey Brin and Larry Web page, and wound up being the location of incorporation of a enterprise known as Google. Within the subsequent quarter-century, Google has turn into greater than only a search engine. It has turn into a device, a collaborative area, and has even turn into a verb.
However once I knew Susan, she was a photographer at my school newspaper, an affable girl with a prepared smile. I’m certain that served her nicely as Google’s enterprise stored constructing, and constructing, and constructing, Google acquired applied sciences, created concepts, and developed partnerships.
Wojcick grew to become the CEO of YouTube ten years in the past, and helped construct the corporate in lots of metrics, together with paid subscribers, variety of hours of movies watched, and variety of customers logged in (over 2 billion per 30 days).
I’m a proud person of YouTube. I acknowledged early on that it could be an unimaginable device to deliver viewers to the sport of area hockey by way of quick tales. I’m particularly happy with the one I did known as The Undesirable Retrievers, a narrative on the membership staff on the College of Maryland-Baltimore County, which had fashioned a 12 months after the varsity program was minimize in 2006.
I’ve additionally used YouTube to do quick movies, particularly ones which rebroadcast our Unfiltered sequence.
Final week’s information that Wojcicki died from lung most cancers hit me laborious. She was a superb and sort one that was devoted to the craft of journalism.
She’s considered one of a rising variety of individuals from my days on the paper who’ve handed away, far too quickly. I’m actually going to overlook her.