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Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube<\/a> and one of the most influential female executives in Silicon Valley, died on Friday, after two years of living with lung cancer the company announced. <\/p>\n Wojcicki, who was 56, stepped down from CEO job at YouTube last year<\/a> after more than two decades leading various parts of Google<\/a> and its Alphabet parent company.<\/p>\n \u201cEven as I write this it feels impossible to me that it\u2019s true,\u201d Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a note to staffers on Friday that was published on the company website<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cHer loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who looked up to her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n Wojcicki was a key figure at Google from the company\u2019s earliest days, when she rented her Palo Alto garage to founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. She soon quit her job at chipmaker Intel<\/a> and joined the fledgling search startup, becoming its first marketing manager in 1999. Over the years, she would oversee Google\u2019s advertising business and its video business, playing a major role in the company\u2019s transformation from startup into today\u2019s $2 trillion tech juggernaut. <\/p>\n The Wojcicki family became known as something close to Silicon Valley royalty. Wojcicki\u2019s sister Anne, the founder and CEO of genetics testing company 23andMe, was once married to Google cofounder Brin. Her mother, Esther, founded the journalism program at Palo Alto High School, in the cradle of the tech industry, and was recognized in a 2012 Digital Learning Day <\/a>by then U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan for using technology effectively in the classroom.<\/p>\n Wojcicki\u2019s husband, Dennis Troper, who is a director of product managment at Google, wrote in a Facebook<\/a> post on Friday that Wojcicki had been living with \u201cnon small cell lung cancer\u201d for two years. \u201cSusan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many,\u201d Troper wrote. <\/p>\n As YouTube\u2019s boss, Wojcicki oversaw one of the most world\u2019s largest media sites, with an audience that streams more than one billion hours of video every day. The video site, which Wojcicki pushed Google to acquire in 2006, generated $8.7 billon in advertising revenue in the second quarter. During the nine years in which Wojcicki led YouTube as CEO, she turned the video site into a reliable business amid a changing market while also battling \u2014 not always successfully<\/a> \u2014 the rampant spread of disinformation.<\/p>\n In an interview with Fortune<\/em>\u00a0Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell <\/a>at the 2022 \u00a0World Economic Forum\u00a0in Davos, Wojcicki discussed the challenges of regulating the content it publishes on the site and that it recommends to users.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you are dealing with a sensitive subject like news, health, science, we are going to make sure that what we\u2019re recommending is coming from a trusted, well-known publisher that can be reliable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She also addressed important issues involving women in the workplace, including the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ruling overturning of the Roe vs. Wade<\/em> decision guaranteeing women the right to abortion.<\/p>\n \u201cMy stance is that women should have a choice when they become a mother. I believe that\u2019s really important. I believe that reproductive rights are human rights and to take away a law and a right that we\u2019ve had for almost 50 years will be a big setback for women. But that\u2019s my personal view,\u201d she said. \u201cRunning a company that really focuses on free speech, we want to make sure that we\u2019re enabling a broad set of opinions that everyone has a right to express their point of view, provided they meet our community guidelines.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nRecommended Newsletter:<\/strong> The Fortune Next to Lead newsletter is a must-read for the next generation of C-suite leaders. Every Monday, the newsletter provides the strategies, resources, and expert insight needed to claim the most coveted positions in business. Subscribe now<\/a>.<\/div>\n