Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared the sad news of the passing of Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, on August 9.
Mr. Pichai revealed the news on social media and in a memo to Google employees shortly after Dennis Troper, a product manager at Google and Susan Wojcicki's husband, announced her departure.
Susan Wojcicki died of lung cancer.
Wojcicki was one of Google's first employees and played a pivotal role in the company's history. In 2014, she took over YouTube as CEO, a role she stepped down from in February 2023 to focus on her family, health, and personal projects.
While continuing to work as an advisor with Google and its parent company Alphabet, Wojcicki has also pursued career challenges elsewhere. Just this summer, she announced that she would join the board of directors of satellite company Planet Labs.
Dennis Troper revealed that his wife of 26 years and mother of five had been battling “lung cancer” for the past two years. According to him, Ms. Wojcicki played a huge role in the family, so her passing was truly an indescribable pain for the family.
For his part, Sundar Pichai praised Wojcicki’s impact on the company and her role in its success. “She is as central to Google’s history as anyone else, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her,” he said.
Wojcicki’s death is not the only tragedy the Troper family has faced recently. Just this February, their 19-year-old son died of an apparent drug overdose in his dorm room.
Over the past few days, many YouTube users have been experiencing videos that automatically skip to the end or suddenly mute, disrupting the viewing experience. Some users believe that this is YouTube's way of punishing those who use ad blockers.
However, YouTube has officially denied this information. According to the company's representative, the above incident is not related to the fact that they are tightening the use of ad blockers by users. The real cause is due to changes being made to improve the performance of the platform, but accidentally causing a bad experience for users.
YouTube confirms that it does not make videos automatically skip to the end.
But some users have reported experiencing the issue even without using an ad blocker, suggesting the issue may not simply be due to an ad blocker conflict.
In addition to the unrelated statement, Google's video-sharing platform still maintains its stance on not using ad blockers, saying that doing so violates its terms of service. The company also suggests that users turn off ad blockers or use YouTube Premium for the best experience.
In response, YouTube pledged to continue improving performance and fixing issues to provide the best user experience. At the same time, the company also emphasized the importance of users supporting content creators by watching ads or using a Premium subscription.
