Strategy question
Should Google acquire Evernote?
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests an acquisition strategy judgment, weighing strategic fit and integration cost against the value of the acquired product and its user base.
How to approach it
- Clarify the strategic rationale being tested: does Google need Evernote's technology, its user base, or its market position in note-taking.
- Assess overlap: Google already has Keep and Docs covering note-taking and documents, so identify what Evernote adds beyond that.
- Identify Evernote's real asset: a loyal power-user base and strong cross-platform search and organization features that Keep lacks.
- Weigh integration cost and risk: migrating or merging user bases historically causes churn, and Evernote's brand and paid subscriber base may not survive a Google acquisition intact.
- Compare against the alternative of building the missing capability (deep search, notebooks) directly into Keep instead of acquiring.
- Conclude with a reasoned recommendation, likely against acquisition, favoring organic feature development, given the overlap and integration risk.
What a strong answer includes
- Correctly identifies the overlap with Keep and Docs as the central risk, rather than treating this as an isolated question.
- Names Evernote's specific differentiator, power-user search and organization, instead of a vague it's a good product.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume Evernote has a few million paying subscribers, small relative to Google's scale, questioning if the acquisition price is justified.
- Weighs build versus buy explicitly, which is the core strategic question an acquisition decision requires.
Common mistakes
- Answering yes or no without addressing the overlap with Google's existing products.
- Not considering integration and brand-migration risk, which has sunk past note-taking acquisitions.
- Ignoring the build-versus-buy alternative.
Likely follow-up questions
- What would change your recommendation?
- How would you migrate Evernote's user base if the acquisition happened?
- What's Evernote's real value beyond its feature set?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop