The house that helped build Google from the USA Today looks back at how Susan Wojcicki’s decision to let Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, rent out space in her garage changed her life and ours.

Wojcicki purchased her 4-bedroom home on 232 Santa Margarita Ave. for about $600,000 and rented out the garage to Page and Brin for $1,700 a month (Google later bought the house). That decision helped create the most popular search engine in the world and changes Wojcicki’s future forever.

Wojcicki became Google’s 18th employee and is now the vice president of product management for Google. Her sister Anne married Brin earlier this year. Google invested $3.9 million in Anne’s biotech company. Dennis Troper, Susan Wojcicki’s husband, is Google’s operations executive. Her brother-in-law, Gregor, worked in Google’s finance department and her mom, Esther Wojcicki, consulted for Google on educational issues.

Susan Wojcicki is also responsible for helping invent the idea of Google AdSense. And she is now pursuing placing Google ads in newspapers, audio, TV and magazines.

All from renting out her garage to two kids.

Related Topics: Google: AdSense | Google: Employees | Google: General | Stats: History

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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