The death of the former YouTube Managing Director Susan Wojcicki on Friday, her key role in one of Silicon Valley’s most legendary origin stories was highlighted.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google In 1998, they rented Wojcicki’s garage in Palo Alto to use as their “worldwide headquarters.”
During a Graduation speech 2014 at Johns Hopkins Universityshe described the circumstances that led to the fateful decision. She said she was newly married and had just bought the house, but could barely afford the mortgage. A mutual friend put her in touch with Page and Brin, who were still doctoral students at Stanford at the time.
“They seemed nice,” Wojcicki said. “Their idea sounded kind of crazy.”
The name of the new company seemed strange to her and she wasn’t sure what it meant, but that didn’t matter at that point.
“As long as you pay your rent on time, you can build your Googly thing here,” she remembered telling them.
At one point, she added, she ate pizza and M&Ms with them late at night. The Google co-founders talked about how their technology could change the world – and how excited they were that there was a washer and dryer in the garage.
According to Google, the company expanded its workspaces to three small bedrooms on the ground floor when the workforce grew to six people.
In 2018, to mark the 20th anniversary of Google’s founding, the company used archive footage to Recreate what the garage looked like in 1998.
The Street View team then released images of each room, allowing viewers to virtually explore the startup’s original office space in all its crowded glory.
The office also had a keyboard for music breaks and the obligatory table tennis table, which in the pictures was folded up and stored in a corner.
In a 2018 video accompanying the recreated office, Wojcicki said, “Wow, it’s incredible that it looks exactly the same. It’s like going back in time.”
Google also released a grainy original video of the garage, shot by the company’s sixth employee, engineer Harry Cheung, who has since become an angel investor.
After walking through the rooms with his camera, he discovered Page working in front of a computer.
