Strategy question
Should Google Maps enter the restaurant business?
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests strategic judgment on vertical expansion, weighing the value of owning a category against the execution and trust risk of becoming an operator, not just an information layer.
How to approach it
- Clarify what entering the restaurant business means: reservations and ordering (already largely covered via Reserve with Google and OpenTable partnerships) versus actually operating restaurants, since the strategy differs completely.
- Assess Google's current position: Maps already surfaces reviews, photos, hours and reservation links, functioning as a discovery and referral layer, not an operator.
- Weigh the trade-off of going deeper (owning bookings, payments, or loyalty) against staying a neutral discovery layer, which preserves trust with thousands of restaurant partners.
- Identify the risk: restaurants may see Google as a competitor rather than a partner if it takes a bigger cut of the transaction, similar to tension seen with delivery platforms and merchants.
- Recommend deepening the transactional layer (bookings, waitlist, payments) rather than actually operating restaurants, since Google's core strength is aggregation and discovery, not hospitality operations.
- Define success as transaction volume and merchant retention on the platform, not new restaurant openings.
What a strong answer includes
- Correctly distinguishes discovery and referral, where Google already plays, from actually operating restaurants, which is a different business entirely.
- Names the real risk, merchant trust erosion, that has played out with delivery platforms taking bigger cuts, and applies that lesson here.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume Google already drives a significant share of restaurant discovery traffic, so the opportunity is deepening monetization of that funnel, not replacing it.
- Recommends a specific, bounded next step, deepening bookings and payments, rather than a sweeping and unrealistic full pivot into restaurant operations.
Common mistakes
- Answering as if Google Maps has no existing restaurant-related product, ignoring Reserve with Google and OpenTable integration.
- Proposing Google actually operate restaurants, which is an unrealistic scope mismatch with its core competency.
- Ignoring merchant trust risk, a well-known tension in platform-versus-partner dynamics.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you avoid alienating restaurant partners as Google takes a bigger role?
- What's the monetization model for a deeper Maps restaurant product?
- How does this compete with OpenTable and Resy?
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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