Susan Wojcicki has died

https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1822132667959386588

by grandmczeb • 2 years ago

721 401 2 years ago

grandmczeb• 2 years ago

Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. 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.

Posted by Sundar Pichai.

akchin• 2 years ago

This sucks. I was at Google many years back and I remember her to be an awesome product leader. In fact even though I was another org, she was helpful and really helped me and our team.

pas• 2 years ago

excuse me for this offtopic (?) tangent, but can you please expand on what does being a good/amazing product leader mean? every kind of context helps, as I have no experience working inside these huge super-successful corps. thanks!

rishabhjain1198• 2 years ago

Rest in peace. A true SV legend.

broknbottle• 2 years ago

whoa, I believe her son also passed away like ~5 months ago.

jjallen• 2 years ago

Yeah super sad recent events in the family. Reminds me that no matter how much money you have life can still hit us hard.

thrownawaysz• 2 years ago

[flagged]

Xenoamorphous• 2 years ago

Yes just read that in Wikipedia. Really sad.

rottencupcakes2• 2 years ago

An accidental drug overdose on campus at UC Berkeley.

One wonders if his mom having terminal cancer was a factor in his overdoing it.

And I cannot imagine how news like that would hit a mother with cancer, when the only thing left for her is legacy.

Truly tragic.

langsoul-com• 2 years ago

Interesting how it's a threads link, and how it loads infinitely faster than Twitter

kylehotchkiss• 2 years ago

Regardless of how people feel about it, Meta/FB is sure putting a lot of resources into it and it seems like it's growing even on people who didn't do a text-first social network in the past.

sgammon5• 2 years ago

Wow. Way too soon :(

valid4life• 2 years ago

R.I.P. - too soon.

sgammon5• 2 years ago

Who is this guy on Threads? Sundar's tweet should be the canonical source:

https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/1822132667959386588

aaomidi2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

fells• 2 years ago

No? The person on Threads does not appear to be her husband. They're merely posting a screenshot of her husband's Facebook post.

sgammon5• 2 years ago

Not the depicted post, the dude on Threads. The link has been changed now.

pogue• 2 years ago

Casey Newton, former editor @ The Verge & who currently runs platformer.news, a pretty significant tech news site in his own right. I'm not sure why he's going by 'crumbler' these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Newton

CSMastermind• 2 years ago

FYI Sundar Pichai posted a tribute: https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/1822132667959386588

Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. 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.

I'll say personally it's tragic to see someone like this pass in their 50s. Given Susan's impact on both Google as a whole and more specifically YouTube it's no understatement to say that she changed the world profoundly.

I don't think that YouTube, in its current form, or the creator economy that it produced, would exist in anywhere near the same shape had Google not acquired and then spent years funding the company at a financial loss.

xbmcuser• 2 years ago

She had a huge impact on YouTube and with it the world as I personally feel YouTube has become one of the largest resource of information on how to do almost anything for the newer generations as well as for people that had no access because they could not read. And as ai translation get better the impact on billions of people will be huge.

guywithahat• 2 years ago

I can’t get the link to load, but here’s Pichai’s take:

Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. 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.

https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/1822132667959386588?s=46

orionblastar• 2 years ago

RIP she will be missed.

Yeri• 2 years ago

Original post on fb: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/qe2ZMcs9Bz4K1SPt/

nsoonhui• 2 years ago

Her sister, Anne, is the ex spouse of Google founder Brin, and 23andme cofounder.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Wojcicki

momoschili• 2 years ago

what a tragedy... I can't think of many sites with the impact that YouTube has had, especially during her tenure as the lead.

lung cancer as well, I don't think she was a smoker so what a bad stroke of luck.

snake_doc• 2 years ago

Tragic loss to the world

talldatethrow2• 2 years ago

Rumble and X posts are gloating that she blocked/delisted anti covid vaccine videos on YouTube, and then gets cancer, something the videos tried to warn people of related to vaccines.

I'm not sure what to say about that anymore.

seydor• 2 years ago

just say that there are a lot of idiots in the world

talldatethrow2• 2 years ago

On both sides probably. One side exaggerates statistics to make their point, and the other wishfully accepts unproven statements to feel better.

I've taken basically all vaccines ever recommended while growing up and traveling, but to say that the covid vaccine was "safe and effective" a year after coming out was a crazy stretch. Why couldn't they just say "we didn't have time to do long term studies, but we think it's fine and worth the risks"? But to say it's safe was a lie IMO and lost the vaccine side a lot of credibility.

chubot• 2 years ago

I always thought it was cool that Google started in her garage in Menlo Park. Too young to be gone :-(

carabiner• 2 years ago

One thing I've heard is that before age 40, people die of trauma or suicide. After age 40, people, including the healthy, just starting dying of everything.

LZ_Khan• 2 years ago

Wow. Terribly sad series of events for that family. Life is not fair.

yyyfb5• 2 years ago

Next time you're thinking "I wish I was the one who had made a billion dollars with my startup idea", remember that only health and family matter, and to have fun while you're alive. RIP.

Edit: some people misinterpreted my comment. I'm just one anonymous voice on the Internet, but am deeply saddened by the passing of Susan Wojcicki, who meant a lot to me as one of the many people who crossed paths with her professionally. I wish her family strength in a very trying moment. She did not deserve this. I've not met another business leader demonstrate everyday kindness to the degree that she did.

Her untimely passing is also a reminder to those of us who sometimes look up to such successful businesspeople that we should all appreciate our luck to be alive and enjoy it to the fullest, as I hope that she did as well, and as I'm sure that she'd prefer we did. RIP

Cookingboy• 2 years ago

As far as net worth figure goes your health is the first significant digit, everything else come after.

ithkuil5• 2 years ago

first significant digit

Big endian

santiagobasulto• 2 years ago

This has nothing to do with business or entrepreneurship. It's cancer, it's a bitch. It can take a 10 year old boy, or an elite athlete.

troll_v_bridge• 2 years ago

You can’t really say it does or doesn’t. Research shows stress can be a contributor though.

https://med.stanford.edu/survivingcancer/cancer-and-stress/s....

magic_man• 2 years ago

But it is more likely when you are old. It is you your immune system unable to kill mutations.

jszymborski• 2 years ago

I took that to be OPs point in a way. Death comes to us all, rich and poor. True wealth is your good health and the relationships it lets you foster.

noncoml2• 2 years ago

That’s BS.

Yes, both rich and poor die of cancer.

But being rich or even just comfortable gives you a completely different experience during the end of life.

You can afford to quit your job and be with your friends and family.

You can afford to see that best doctors that will ensure you have as comfortable as possible end of life.

Your kids can afford to take a sabbatical to come spend time with you.

You can be sure that no matter what your kids will be financially secure.

You know that you got the absolute best care that you could.

The list goes on.

Cancer is horrible and everyone who loses someone hurts the same. But you absolutely cannot keep saying that being poor and rich doesn’t make a difference during the progress of this awful disease.

Only someone who has never been poor would ever say that.

jart2• 2 years ago

If you're poor you won't even officially have cancer, because no one will diagnose you, since then you'd be entitled to services. Someone who's actually been poor would understand this.

yyyfb5• 2 years ago

Two things can be true.

Money does buy comfort and care. Also, it does not make one immortal.

We can choose what we take away from events. I could choose to feel unlucky that I haven't made as much money as someone else, and I would be justified in it, because being rich absolutely makes a difference. I just choose to feel lucky to be alive instead, and I'm just as justified. You are free to choose your own perspective.

chr12• 2 years ago

Health is only temporary, and everyone in your family is going to die, until someone makes a trillion dollar startup to cure aging. So it is fundamentally wrong to put health, family, and work as things opposing each other, ultimately they are all needed on a way to get all of the galaxy filled with life. And as Susan have shown one can both do great work, and have a big family with 5 children.

RobertDeNiro• 2 years ago

High levels of stress (often related to work) have been shown to impact health. So I think it’s a fair thing to oppose them.

badpun2• 2 years ago

Why it's a good idea to fill galaxy with life? Why should we care about it? Also, seeing that our current civilization-system is already at the brink of catastrophe, we should focus on less ambitious goals, such as preserving life on Earth.

melling6• 2 years ago

Cure aging? We could relieve a lot of pain in the world by just curing cancer(s), or at least make them treatable like HIV.

Jake died yesterday. I don’t even think he was 40 years old.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555

Susan was only 56.

Let’s at least give everyone a chance at a full life.

theGnuMe• 2 years ago

Living in poverty and Being broke is stressful too. Living in a shit family as well.

yyyfb5• 2 years ago

It's not about them opposing each other, it's about priorities.

wslh2• 2 years ago

Your message is very powerful, for the good, and I think people nowadays are used to extremes instead of the balance when they read something like your comment.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

Susan didn’t start YouTube.

daveed• 2 years ago

I'm not a Googler, but would still ask commenters to show some respect for the person who died, and save your opinions about youtube for another day.

tomohelix• 2 years ago

Maybe I am a callous person, but I have never agreed to this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing.

People live and die. It is inevitable. To the grieving family, I can understand why refraining from insulting the dearly departed is necessary. They are grieving and can be irrational. No need to make things worse for them.

But between unrelated people? Why can't I discuss the legacy of the dead? We are defined by our deeds in life. It is only natural that in death, people will talk and opine about what we have done. Nothing wrong with it.

cowsup• 2 years ago

I feel like there's an unwritten "recently" in there. If you were to speak ill of Colonel Sanders, nobody would berate you for speaking ill of the dead. But when a CEO like Wojcicki, who made changes that were unpopular to the end-users (but helped turn YouTube into an actual profitable company) dies, it's considered very impolite to use that opportunity to bad-mouth decisions she made. When her son died earlier this year, that would've been a bad time to speak ill of her, as well, even though she herself was still alive.

A better phrase may be "Don't say things that will hurt the feelings of those who are grieving," but that doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.

somenameforme3• 2 years ago

Socrates never wrote a single thing down and was, somewhat ironically, opposed to writing. The reason is that he felt that words cannot defend themselves. They can be twisted, taken out of context, and misrepresented, with none there to defend them, provide that missing context, or what not. Fortunately his student Plato disagreed so here we can discuss him 2400 years after his death.

With a dead person, I think this logic holds to an even higher degree. Personally I'm not really sure whether I agree or disagree with it, but it seems pretty reasonable, especially if we don't hyperbolically immediately leap to absurdly extreme examples like Hitler or whatever.

sigmar• 2 years ago

But between unrelated people? Why can't I discuss the legacy of the dead? We are defined by our deeds in life. It is only natural that in death, people will talk and opine about what we have done. Nothing wrong with it.

unless you have a magical way to make your comment here invisible to her family and friends, posting it to the internet is not keeping the comment exclusively "between unrelated people." Many of those replies to Pichai are vile.

dotnet003• 2 years ago

Agreed, I don't get it either. I also wonder how many people saying this sort of thing expressed the same sentiment when someone they had a strong dislike of passed or had a close brush with death.

We've had many such incidents over the recent years and at least in my anecdotal observations, people do not consistently apply this.

DannyBee• 2 years ago

"We are defined by our deeds in life"

We are but most folks here basically know nothing of her deeds, or really anything about her. They see one piece of a thing she was a face of for some time period, and that they also knew mostly nothing about, but appear to love to have strong opinions on!

If you want to speak of her deeds then go and learn about them. Otherwise, people aren't speaking of anything other than some small myopic view of a human being they knew nothing about. Folks don't get to say that she is defined by the small piece of stuff they saw, just because they want to have an opinion on it.

Besides being disrespectful, it's not even interesting, and it says more about the people doing it than the person they are talking about.

It's like saying you are defined by the small and short interactions you had with grocery store cashiers who happen to like to post about their experiences with you on the internet and nothing else.

matrix87• 2 years ago

Maybe I am a callous person, but I have never agreed to this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing.

If they're rich and powerful who cares... here's John Oliver's reaction to Kissinger dying [0]... tl;dr "not soon enough"

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HmrJmq7d1c

sneak• 2 years ago

When is there a better time to discuss the works of a famous person than when they are in the news?

asah2• 2 years ago

In particular, Susan was a lovely soul and specifically deserves all of our respect.

If you want to hate, then hate the game, not the player (especially in this case).

somenameforme3• 2 years ago

This saying never made sense to me as a game is only a game if there are players.

vintermann• 2 years ago

I'm sure she was, but I did not personally know her and I'm pretty sure few others here did as well. It's newsworthy for what she was, her role, not really for who she was as a person.

I certainly wouldn't mind reading some personal eulogies about what a great mentor her was etc., or about how she influenced your life with her work even if you didn't know her.

But I also don't mind reading critical posts about the role she played, I think that's part of the picture for someone who's famous as a business leader. If people weren't willing to speak freely about the dead, we wouldn't have had the Nobel prizes.

briandear2• 2 years ago

She censored things because of politics. That’s not “lovely.”

YouTube has videos on the dangers of GMO crops, despite the scientific consensus for their safety and utility.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959534/#cit000...

YouTube has plenty of videos about electromagnetic sensitivity about which the WHO says: “EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure.”

https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-hea...

And more stupidity: “Eating these foods kills cancer”

https://youtu.be/WGbFnp56csg?si=t54Pcr3uqjrXRx9f

“12 foods that can fight and cure cancer”

https://youtu.be/FdlKCpEzSAE?si=J6rtKs6valWnamBP

Interview with Robert DeNiro 8 years about his concerns about vaccines and autism and his doubts about the vaccine effectiveness statistics.

https://youtu.be/FJ7iPn39i08?si=mRYD3a3y9HdMPMQ8

Covid censorship was political and not from some altruistic “goodness.”

And YouTube experienced very significant growth during the pandemic. So that “lovely” soul was profiting because of the lockdowns. Lockdowns that were possible due to fear and a lack of any permissible public debate — partially thanks to YouTube. Would lockdowns have ended sooner if there was more debate on the topic allowed? Definitely. What about school closures? Absolutely. But videos debating these things weren’t allowed.

So no, the game and the player in this case are one and the same. I’m not going to respect anyone that supported lockdowns or supported suppressing scientific debate. Curating opinion (and facts) while pretending to not to isn’t worthy of respect.

And, YouTube still allows those addictive kid videos where the narrator says “If you love your parents, like and subscribe. If you don’t love your parents, don’t like and subscribe.”

nailer• 2 years ago

The people in this thread and elsewhere online are generally arguing that she was not a lovely soul.

kubb• 2 years ago

I’d take it as a time to reflect that no matter how much profit you make, people will remember you for what you’ve accomplished. Think about that when you get to your coveted position of power in the industry.

toomuchtodo3• 2 years ago

Those people won’t matter. Your loved ones do and will though, and they won’t measure you by your accomplishments and net worth.

surgical_fire2• 2 years ago

I have no dog in this game - literally no opinion on what kind of person she was.

I use YouTube, even though I don't particularly like it, much like every other Google product. Not sure how much of what I dislike on YouTube is her fault or not,and it doesn't really matter anyway. It is not like I hold any hopes of YouTube becoming any better now.

But I find this kind of comment curious. Someone noteworthy and controversial dies, critical comments are sure to follow.

Happened when people such as Kissinger or Chomsky died. No one was saying "show some respect to the person who died, save your opinions for another day". It would be fairly ridiculous to say so.

meiraleal6• 2 years ago

Don't kill Chomsky, he is still alive

meiraleal6• 2 years ago

You know that Google has an intranet, right? The CEO of a division that extracts rent from almost every living person doesn't deserve more respect than a homeless person in SF

polotics2• 2 years ago

On a 1-10 scale of nefariousness, I would classify Youtube as pretty low, it's a manageable addiction and with a little bit of self control the videos you watch will be worthwhile. I am a subscriber. Then there is Youtube Kids, and whoever worked on that deserves a 9, and good bye.

hungie• 2 years ago

Why? If a person has done measurable harm to you, and your community, why is it not acceptable to say, "this person's legacy was one of harm. They chose to hurt vulnerable people"?

peterfirefly2• 2 years ago

I associate her with censorship. Should I respect her for that?

reducesuffering4• 2 years ago

Her son just died of a fentanyl overdose just a few months ago too?

Not even a billion $ will protect you from America's problems with cancer and fentanyl. We need to fix this. I mean, just look at this chart:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...

Is it pesticides like this recent HN thread alludes to?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182121

Idk. But the US is uniquely doing something very wrong.

mieses• 2 years ago

the pharmocracy will allow a cure for cancer?

viraptor2• 2 years ago

We've got a number of working cures and preventions for cancers, just not most types and many are not 100% reliable. I'm happy to complain about pharma and we've still got a long way to go, but this is a bad take. Yes, they've "allowed" it for years. (Did you get your HPV vaccine already?)

ithkuil5• 2 years ago

Why not? Isn't it in "their interest" to keep people alive longer and longer?

akira25013• 2 years ago

If you live long enough you will most likely die from either heart disease, #2 killer, or cancer, the #1 killer. Accidental self inflicted injury is #3. We're not doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite.

Since not even having a billion will allow you to cheat death, perhaps we shouldn't allow billionaires to cheat everyone else in life.

abraxas2• 2 years ago

Certain other countries in that chart have longer average lifespans than the US, eg. Canada, Germany, Australia etc.

throwaway20372• 2 years ago

    > Accidental self inflicted injury

What does that mean?

trhway3• 2 years ago

It is a strange chart. It for example shows that Belarus has pretty much the same rate all those 30 years. Cancer takes bunch of years to develop, and Belarus has had significant cancer numbers increase starting 10-20 years after Chernobyl. You can look up the articles on doubling rate of say breast cancer there which even without Chernobyl like events presents like 20% chances - now calculate what doubling of those chances means.

When it comes to US that chart looks a lot like the obesity rate chart, and obesity is a partial gateway to cancer, though they may just correlate too stemming from the same reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...

reducesuffering4• 2 years ago

The problem with pointing obesity as the culprit is that ourworldindata has the same chart for obesity, where almost all countries are increasing at the same rate as US. But just US has this stark high cancer rate.

yabatopia• 2 years ago

Very strange chart. The US has more relaxed regulations on food additives, pesticides, hormones used in livestock farming, and environmental pollution compared to the European Union. But that still does not explain the differences with, for example, Australia or Asia. Obesity may play a role, but obesity has also been on the rise in the EU for a few decades.

rottencupcakes2• 2 years ago

I don’t think the tox report showed fentanyl.

Looks like Xanax and Cocaine.

https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-news/cause-of-death-reveale...

reducesuffering4• 2 years ago

Ok corrected. I was going off a cursory quote from the grandmother.

rubyn00bie• 2 years ago

Can we have another black bar at the top of hackernews? Feel free to delete this comment, dang, et. al. She’s just obviously had an outsized effect on us all whether we realize it or not.

veltas• 2 years ago

You have to email to request.

_zagj• 2 years ago

I love all of these ironic black bar request posts.

georgel2• 2 years ago

This is a very sad day. For her to also lose her son in February too.

lchengify• 2 years ago

Was shocked to hear this news. I worked for Google years ago but I was in the NYC office, so we didn't run into the YouTube folks much.

Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge creator monetization network, a music channel, an education platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.

It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.

Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.

I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world without it.

RIP.

georgel2• 2 years ago

Agreed, I have gotten insane amount of value from YouTube.

TMWNN2• 2 years ago

Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN

Who? Who has a negative opinion about YouTube? The occasional "My kids watch too much of it" != "mixed opinions" about the site in general.

xanderlewis6• 2 years ago

A lot of YouTubers have been very critical of YouTube’s approach to things and treatment of creators in the past.

Also, just as an example, YouTube demonetises (and therefore effectively punishes) you for using words like ‘suicide’ so now we have to say silly things like ‘unalive’ — at least until Google/the advertisers catch on. These days YouTube is more censored than traditional TV.

mihular• 2 years ago

My complaint is that there isn't a family subscription option in my country. Also without Music. It's either personal with Music or damn annoying commercials. Another complaint would be non transparent and sometimes wrong censorship.

CPLX• 2 years ago

The fact that it’s a linchpin component of an illegal monopoly is one good reason.

briandear2• 2 years ago

Government-coordinated censorship during Covid. That’s my negative opinion.

Covid vax concerns were allowed during the last months of the Trump administration, but it suddenly became censored after Biden was elected.

pavlov5• 2 years ago

YouTube’s algorithm feeds increasingly radicalizing content to young people. It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.

Any time someone posts a YouTube link to a political discussion, it’s guaranteed to be the worst nonsense that pries on people who “do their own research.” (No matter if they’re left or right on the political spectrum, there’s endless junk on YouTube for both.)

There’s surely good stuff on YouTube, but as a parent I honestly wouldn’t miss it if it disappeared overnight.

cheeseomlit• 2 years ago

I like a lot of content hosted on YouTube but that doesn't mean I like YouTube, especially under Google.

gloryjulio• 2 years ago

YouTube is how I got the education I needed to get into the tech industry.

zht• 2 years ago

I hope that when I die no one spends so much focus on the business aspects of what I built or the valuations

sramam• 2 years ago

Doesn't that depend on what context a person knew you at - personal or professional?

The personal side typically will center on emotional aspects of being human. However what you do with your intellect is also a major part of being human. And that part is most often expressed only in our professional lives.

Celebrating a job well done and an outsized impact is a good thing - and if I may, the most "human" of things to do?

RIP.

katzinsky• 2 years ago

HN is essentially a business development forum so it makes sense that's what people here would focus on.

layer8• 2 years ago

Luckily, you will never know, so I wouldn’t place much weight on it.

mrkramer3• 2 years ago

Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years.

I was always critical of YouTube from the sort of technical perspective than just pure UX. The core product and the core UX are great and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium because I use YouTube so much. All in all, YouTube was and still is internet phenomena and they definitely dominate internet video, imo one of the best internet product ever created.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 2 years ago

YouTube has worked well.

However, I did try their YT Premium, for a while, and was incredibly disappointed in their UI.

I assume that the Premium UI was designed for people that use their free tier, but is very strange, to folks like me, who come from other paid services.

But I am likely not their target audience. I suppose that YT Premium does well.

talldayo4• 2 years ago

and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium

Why?

Serious question, too. You can sideload clients that give you every single feature of YouTube Premium for free. Unless you're expressly lazy, like being taken advantage of or enjoy watching advertisements, there's really no excuse. YouTube Premium is the "I'm trapped in this place and you people have finally gotten me" fee - you can circument it all together by just, not using YouTube's software. Newpipe is must-have on Android, I'm certain something similar exists for iOS. I run SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't get a single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the installation and usage of Open Source software.

I use YouTube a lot, but between uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock (which I set-and-forget like 4 years ago) I don't have a single gripe with the experience. I hear people contemplate paying YouTube for a worse experience and it gives me hives. The content is on a server; you are making yourself miserable by acquiescing to a harmful client. Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to the Walled Garden.

AmericanChopper3• 2 years ago

It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels.

I would say it’s more a business that rests on its monopolization of the market. As a product there’s plenty I like about YouTube, but it dominated the market through the use of many highly anti-competitive strategies, and has what many would consider (and what may well be proven to be) an illegal monopoly.

You can’t deny its impact, but to give such high praise to the management seems rather misguided to me.

edanm• 2 years ago

In what way is YouTube an illegal monopoly?

sytelus2• 2 years ago

YouTube is absolutely the business that is resting on laurels, just like Google Maps and Gmail. Sometime I wonder if these products have any real active development teams at all besides ads. YouTube massively screwed with users by forcing poorly executed botched migration to YouTube Music. Even outsiders can see that this was entirely internal Google politics which powerful people like Wojcicki should have been able to avoid but she didn't. It just makes me wonder if these billionaire leaders of Google products really care anymore about anything. There is visibly an utter lack of hunger at the top and these people clearly should have been spending more time with family leaving these products with more hungry minds. YouTube recommendations are crap and it's still amazing that in 2024 just clicking one video will fill up most of recommendations with same thing. It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins. TikTok took full advantage of this but YouTube CEO just kept napping at the wheel. Ultimately, the original product mostly just kept going but the measure of success is not about retaining audience but what it could have been if there was an ambitious visionary leader at the helm.

tsimionescu4• 2 years ago

It never got around to incentivize creators to produce concise content and to this day creators keep producing massive 30 min diatribe that could have been done in 3 mins.

Why on Earth would you want shorter videos? The best thing about YouTube is that it's one of the only places you can find quality medium-to-long-form content.

swalsh• 2 years ago

I think googles peering agreements are possibly the only reason YouTube is viable as a free service. Hard to compete against a company who basically doesn't have to pay for bandwidth.

newshackr• 2 years ago

Google also invests many billions of dollars to build their internet network and parts of the public Internet so it is hardly free

ghaff3• 2 years ago

To a fairly casual observer like myself, YouTube early on looked like mostly a platform for massive video copyright infringement--especially before home video became so relatively cheap and easy. I don't use it nearly as much as some here but it definitely transformed into something much different for the most part and managed to make it work as a business (at least as part of Google).

ethbr14• 2 years ago

Younger folks forget that YouTube launched (2005) a few years before both the iPhone launched and Netflix pivoted to streaming (2007).

In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c) there was no "on demand" anything, as most media flowed over centrally-programmed cable or broadcast subscriptions, and (d) people capturing video on mobile devices was rare (first gen iPhone couldn't) but obviously a future growth area.

So early YouTube was literally unlike anything that came before -- watch a thing you want, whenever you want.

coffeebeqn3• 2 years ago

Yeah I remember watching Seinfeld and full seasons of cartoons on early YouTube. People basically just uploaded their whole pirated video collections there

marcuskane2• 2 years ago

To a less casual observer like myself, early YouTube looked like a bastion of protection for fair use of copyrighted material.

Sadly, the copyright cartel swiftly attacked and all the regular people lost their rights. It seems like the lesson learned is that the copyright-owning corporations can't be trusted to play fairly or meet in the middle on fair use. We really need to just abolish copyright laws entirely.

yzydserd• 2 years ago

I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point.

More than 20,000 hours over at most 18 years is at least 3 hours per day on average. That’s a lot of watching.

loloquwowndueo• 2 years ago

The average person spends 5 hours/day on their phone and it’s likely most of it is passive watching (YouTube, TikTok, etc). So 3 hours/day doesn’t sound like too much.

lasc4r2• 2 years ago

My dad uses it to get fascist/right-wing propaganda for about 4 hours every night. All nicely monetized for any grifter willing to debase themselves for a potential fortune. Truly novel, but not well thought through or done with any care at all besides profits which is par for the course in silicon valley.

tourmalinetaco2• 2 years ago

Your idea of fascism must be rather tame, considering YouTube’s active censorship of anything even slightly right-of-center.

vsuperpower20213• 2 years ago

Tech companies should spend more time banning people from talking about things I would personally prefer they didn't.

dotnet003• 2 years ago

YouTube has very much been resting on its laurels, they were innovative 20 years ago when they started. For the past decade or so they have mostly just rested on their laurels allowing the auto-moderation to rampage and destroy people's livelihoods.

They've been way behind on adding standard features that their competitors see lots of benefit from. For example, YouTube was years late to the 'channel memberships' game despite the popularity of Twitch and Patreon. YouTube still lacks many of the popular streaming features from Twitch, and only relatively recently got around to adding stuff like polls. I can't think of any feature in the past decade that was a YouTube innovation rather than an innovation from competitors that was copied over years later.

dylan6042• 2 years ago

I've often wondered why YT hasn't released a subscription fee or donate type button where they could easily take a small nominal processing fee while removing the friction of forcing use of 3rd party services. Is liability from that kind of money movement too much for them to care with all of the much less risky money they are making?

tim333• 2 years ago

It's still for me much more useable than the competitors. There have been quite a lot of features added in the 20 years - being able to choosse the viewing quality, variable playback speed, rapid transcription for subtitles, live video where if you join late you can start from the begining at 2x till it catches up. I still interenally curse if I'm made to watch video on a non youtube player as there's usually something that doesn't work. Youtube is often the only one to work ok on slow connections.

maxglute• 2 years ago

YT could learn a lot from bilibili. They've slowly crawled their way to reasonable feature set over the years.

xnx• 2 years ago

The way YouTube was caught offguard by TikTok is even more significant than than the way Google was caught offguard by ChatGPT.

yas_hmaheshwari• 2 years ago

Well said! Having used almost all video learning platforms (Oreilly, skillshare, pluralsight, Coursera etc.), I now believe that YouTube is the superset of all platforms.

Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere

johnnyanmac14• 2 years ago

I'll preface this with the most important part that cancer sucks and I wish it not even on my worst enemies. I hope Susan's family can find some peace.

but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined.

it's very weird because "successful" doesn't mean "makes the most profit" here. It's undoubedtly a huge and challenging infrastructure to manage, but it apparently took Google over a decade to start being profitable. I don't know if that's some hollywood accounting or commodification to ads, but in many ways I feel like YT outspent the rest of the competition and in some ways stifled more efficient ways to deliver video content.

I feel a bit bad because it's clear YT has been turning the script for some time, and while Susan took a lot of that blame these wheels were turning long before she became CEO (and turn long after she stepped down). But that just shows why monopolies are bad. I do hope something better for creators takes over eventually.

latexr• 2 years ago

objectively

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What makes a business successful and what makes a good product are both highly subjective.

sgammon5• 2 years ago

I would also vote for the black bar if possible

1234554321a• 2 years ago

I want to vote against this. Thanks.

sgammon5• 2 years ago

I'm honestly curious, why? I didn't expect to be downvoted.

postatic• 2 years ago

We argue about agile processes, front end frameworks, languages, microservices, revenues, fundings, options, shares, hustles and all and at the end of the day we return back to the earth.

silisili• 2 years ago

The thought helps ground me(no pun intended), whether during aforementioned battles at work or worrying over something in life.

Not really religious, but always liked the short line

'For dust you are, and to dust you shall return'

DanielleMolloy• 2 years ago

RIP. Her son just died early this year, from a drug overdose.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/31/marco-t...

sva_• 2 years ago

Troper's autopsy found high concentrations of cocaine, amphetamine, alprazolam (Xanax),

What a strange mix.

s1artibartfast• 2 years ago

The amphetamine is almost assuredly from the cocaine, so that just means they were doing coke and Xanax.

Xanax as a party drug is just strange in general.

orionsbelt• 2 years ago

Depends on the half life and concentrations.

Daily adderal RX for ADHD or studying. Coke at night to party. Xanax at end of night to come down from the uppers and try to sleep. That mix is pretty common.

oyebenny• 2 years ago

She is internet history.

deadbabe• 2 years ago

Crazy how so many young people are just dying of cancer these days.

jasonvorhe• 2 years ago

Crazy, right?

sumedh• 2 years ago

You are getting aware of it more due to social media.

shortrounddev2• 2 years ago

No, there is a rise in colon cancer among people in their 20s and 30s, and scientists are saying it's probably ultra processed foods

rchaud• 2 years ago

She was the same age as Steve Jobs when he passed.

robertoandred• 2 years ago

56 isn't young.

LoveMortuus• 2 years ago

Rest in peace Susan

mrkramer3• 2 years ago

Such a devastating news from the human therefore emotional perspective; just 6 months after her freshman son overdosed, now she is gone too. I hope they will be reunited in the afterlife.

lowdownbutter• 2 years ago

pshirshov• 2 years ago

You may ask me where my tinfoil hat is, but something strange seems to be happening. My neighbour who never smoked suddenly discovered he has terminal lung cancer. Radon tests in his house were negative. The cases of early lung cancer in healthy non-smoking individuals seem to be on rise in Ireland over last 5-6 years according to the official statistics. In the news I'm reading about massive amount of cases of persistent cough which "takes weeks to resolve".

sampo• 2 years ago

In the news I'm reading about massive amount of cases of persistent cough which "takes weeks to resolve".

There is one more covid wave going on, so that could be a reason for many people coughing.

wslh2• 2 years ago

More familiar information about her and her successful family [1]. The book is available here [2] (the Kindle version is more expensive than the physical book editions though).

Interesting to mention about the Polgar sisters again [3].

Z''L.

[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-godmother-of-silicon-va...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Successful-People-Lessons/d...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

pmarreck• 2 years ago

RIP. I hear that not everyone liked some of her decisions.

Personally, I wish I had any control at all over YouTube Shorts.

paxys2• 2 years ago

People of course associate her with YouTube, but Susan Wojcicki has had an overall fascinating career.

Page and Brin started Google in her garage. She was employee #16 at the company. She was behind the Google logo, Google Doodles, Image Search, AdSense, then all of advertising, and ultimately YouTube.

Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her role. RIP.

cmrdporcupine• 2 years ago

Yeah it's interesting to see the press and others really pushing on the YouTube thing when it is AdSense that made Google what it was and is still today. An advertising revenue money machine. And it was in many ways her baby.

igetspam• 2 years ago

I personally wouldn't be where I am without her. Google wasn't my first job but it was the first one that mattered and I was there pretty early (2004). The founding team set Google up for success. The tech was obviously key but you can still ruin good tech by running a bad business. She earned her success, multiple times and I have a deep appreciation for what she did and what she was part of. It's a sad day, for sure.

strikelaserclaw• 2 years ago

I always wonder how many people could have replicated similar successes if put in similar positions and i always feel like it is a lot. Like i can't imagine you taking someone from the same time period as newton or einstein and replacing them and seeing similar success but in a rich environment surrounded with bright people like early google, i feel like just being early to google is enough to guarantee that you'll have some good ideas. Using advertising to make money has always existed that is what tv channels and magazines did for a long time before the internet, i'm sure google would have been just as successful without google doodles or put another way - google's success allowed it to be whacky and not vice versa.

hahamaster• 2 years ago

You're very wrong. Most people put in her position would be a disaster and they would either leave quickly or would be kicked out. Lots of people at Google left or were fired because they were crap, and they were definitely not randomly picked up from the street. She stayed and wasn't fired and that's because she was of the highest caliber.

constantban• 2 years ago

Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her role. RIP.

So she made some of the most user-hostile, internet-ruining products and created one of the most evil companies currently active? Great obituary going on there. With apologies to the people grieving her, she is basically 2024 Thomas Midgley Jr.

redeuxx• 2 years ago

Thank you for your opinion.

bushbaba2• 2 years ago

Susan not only built up YouTube but also the community around her. She will be missed but not forgotten

NelsonMinar• 2 years ago

I admired Susan in the early days, long before Youtube. She did a remarkable job earning respect and leadership roles in a company that mostly only valued engineers. Also she was kind and humane in a way that was not entirely common at the company.

Balgair• 2 years ago

She was someone who left a huge mark on my life. Though not in the forefront, but in the backend, so to speak.

Fuck cancer.

mupuff1234• 2 years ago

I always assumed that ultra wealthy people can utilize preventive medicine to the max and catch stuff like cancer as soon as it appears - but i guess not?

toomuchtodo3• 2 years ago

whyenot• 2 years ago

I went to school with her starting in elementary school on the Stanford campus through high school at Gunn.

My mom was one of her teachers and just told me “this is so sad, she was such a beautiful kid. She went on to do amazing things.”

Yes, she did.

danjl• 2 years ago

Susan lived four houses away from me on Tolman Dr.and I remember walking to Nixon elementary school carrying our instruments for music on Thursdays. Such a rough final year and such a wonderful life. RIP

omot• 2 years ago

are we not going to put a black bar on HN for her?

crowcroft• 2 years ago

I might be drawing too much from one specific example (although there aren't many examples to draw from in this case) but it smacks of ...something, that the passing of a female leader in the tech industry seems to draw a lot more ire than others, and also doesn't meet the standards for a black bar at the time of this comment (unless I missed it).

Perhaps not as much of a 'technical' contributor to tech world, but one of the largest companies in the world started in her garage, she was an early employee and served in senior leadership for decades.

00_hum• 2 years ago

it looks like she resigned as soon as she got cancer. crazy that it ended in such a similar way to so many ordinary people

bsimpson• 2 years ago

Same age as Steve Jobs when he died.

interludead• 2 years ago

Susan's impact on the world and on those who knew her is undeniable. May she rest in peace.

tills13• 2 years ago

Humbling that you can literally have it all and still not even make it to 60.

danielktdoranie• 2 years ago

Can’t say I will miss her. She was a tyrant who bragged about shutting down free speech and censoring people she did not agree with, the standard communist tactic of controlling language.

rldjbpin• 2 years ago

as a "youtuber" (yet to paid for their videos), SW was from my memory the only public leadership face of youtube. being ignorant to her role in the parent company, i like many directed all of our frustrations of the platform at her.

definitely miss that now after the switch back to the faceless leadership, and saddened by the loss. condolences to the family.

Susan Wojcicki has died

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