Death of the former YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki on Friday highlighted her pivotal role in one of Silicon Valley’s most legendary origin stories.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google In 1998, they leased Wojcicki’s Palo Alto garage to use as their “world headquarters.”
In one 2014 Commencement Address at Johns Hopkins UniversityShe described the circumstances that led to her fateful decision. She said she had just gotten married and had just bought a house, but could barely afford the mortgage. A mutual friend connected her with Page and Brin, who were both Stanford graduate students at the time.
“They seemed nice,” Wojcicki said. “Their ideas sounded a little crazy.”
Although their new company name struck her as strange and she wasn’t sure what it meant, none of that mattered at the time.
“As long as you pay your rent on time, you can build your Googly company here,” she recalled telling them.
She ended up joining them for late-night pizza and M&Ms, she added, with the Google cofounders talking about how their technology could change the world—and how excited they were that the garage had a washer and dryer.
According to Google, the company expanded its workspace into three small bedrooms on the ground floor as its staff grew to six.
In 2018, to celebrate Google’s 20th anniversary, the company used archival footage to recreated the look of the garage in 1998.
The Street View team then posted images of each room, allowing viewers to virtually explore the startup’s original office space in all its grandeur.
The office also has a piano keyboard for listening to music during breaks and a ping pong table, although photos show it has been folded up and stored in a corner.
In a 2018 video accompanying the recreated office, Wojcicki said, “Wow, it’s so cool to see it still look like that. It’s like going back in time.”
Google also posted an original video of the garage shot by the company’s sixth employee, engineer Harry Cheung, who has since become an angel investor.
After touring the rooms with his camera, he found Page hard at work at his computer.
