Susan Wojcicki, a key Google employee and ex-YouTube CEO, dies at 56

The longtime Googler gave the company its first office, helped turn it into an advertising behemoth, and suggested it buy YouTube, which she later ran for nearly a decade.

Both Google and YouTube would have existed without Susan Wojcicki’s contributions. But during nearly a quarter century as a Googler, she was utterly critical to both companies’ success at multiple junctures. That included bringing YouTube into the Google fold in the first place and then taking the video site to 2.5 billion users and $29 billion in annual revenue as its longest-serving CEO. Wojcicki died on Friday at age 56, two years after being diagnosed with lung cancer and 18 months after stepping down as YouTube’s CEO.