Cristos Goodrow

Goodrow, who is from Los Angeles, first wanted to study architecture but entered Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is a private research university in Ithaca, New York, and a member of the Ivy League. It is New York State's federal land-grant university, a distinction unique within the Ivy League. Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White founded the university in 1865, and it opened in 1868. In addition to its Ithaca campus, Cornell operates Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech in New York City and a medical college in Qatar. It enrolled 26,793 students in fall 2024. Its president is Michael I. Kotlikoff.Open the full entry’s College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in mathematics and computer science and graduating in 1991; as a student he helped start Cornell’s Alternative Spring Break program.⁠[1]

After graduation he worked for Teach for America, then at a tech company, and later at startups acquired by PeopleSoft and IBM.⁠[1]

He studied mathematics and computer science at Cornell, UC Santa Barbara and UC BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry; before GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry he was director of search engine software at AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry, and he later served as an engineering director at Google Shopping.⁠[2]

Goodrow joined YouTube in 2011. He recalled that its machine learning recommendation system then aimed to maximize views, yet some sessions with more views seemed to be the worst experiences.⁠[3]

In March 2012 YouTube switched its recommendation objective from views to time spent watching, and views fell by almost 20% in one day; Goodrow explained that people’s time is precious to them.⁠[3]

On February 27, 2017, Goodrow, then YouTube’s vice president of engineering, announced on the official blog that people around the world were watching a billion hours of YouTube every day, crediting the earlier decision to measure watch time instead of view counts.⁠[4]

On January 25, 2020, Goodrow appeared on episode 68 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, introduced as VP of Engineering at Google and head of Search and Discovery at YouTube; topics included the YouTube algorithm, clickbait thumbnails, personalization and video understanding.⁠[5]

On September 15, 2021, Goodrow wrote on the YouTube blog that he had spent over a decade building its recommendation system; the post said the system was begun in 2008, added watch time in 2012 and learns from over 80 billion signals.⁠[6]

On November 1, 2024, Goodrow spoke in a University of Notre Dame speaker series; he was then a YouTube vice president of engineering overseeing Core Experiences, which includes search, recommendations and the main YouTube app.⁠[2]

YouTube: Official website: https://www.youtube.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]