Product design question
What new product should Google invest in and why?
- Product design
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Tests forward-looking investment judgment, requiring the candidate to pick one defensible bet grounded in Google's actual strengths rather than a broad trends list.
How to approach it
- Pick one concrete investment area, such as AI-powered enterprise tools built on Google Cloud's infrastructure and Workspace's distribution, rather than surveying many.
- Ground the pick in Google's real assets: massive first-party data, Cloud infrastructure, and existing enterprise relationships through Workspace.
- Identify the market gap: enterprises want AI capability but need it embedded in tools they already use, not another standalone app to adopt.
- Explain the mechanism: bundling AI features (drafting, summarization, data analysis) directly into Docs, Sheets and Gmail lowers adoption friction versus a separate product.
- Address the competitive threat this responds to: Microsoft Copilot embedded in Office is the direct competitive pressure justifying urgency here.
- Define success as enterprise seat upgrade rate to AI-enabled tiers and retention lift among adopters.
What a strong answer includes
- Picks one grounded bet instead of listing several disconnected trends like quantum or robotics.
- Explicitly names Microsoft Copilot as the competitive pressure this investment responds to, grounding the strategy in real market dynamics.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume enterprise AI seat upgrades convert at 10% in year one, meaningful given Workspace's large existing base.
- Explains the distribution advantage mechanism, bundling into existing tools, rather than assuming Google needs to out-build OpenAI on model quality alone.
Common mistakes
- Listing multiple unrelated trend areas instead of committing to one investment thesis.
- Ignoring the direct competitive context (Microsoft Copilot) that makes this urgent.
- Not tying the investment to a concrete monetization or success metric.
Likely follow-up questions
- How do you defend this investment against a bet on consumer AI instead?
- What's the biggest risk to this thesis?
- How would you measure ROI on this investment within two years?
More product design questions
- Design a TV for a car.Google · Product design · Hard
- Design a refrigerator for the blind.Google · Product design · Hard
- How do you design a camera for the elderly?Google · Product design · Medium
- Redesign Twitter for eCommerce.Shopify · Product design · Hard
- How would you go about designing a new location sharing app for Google?Google · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve Google Home?Google · Product design · Easy
More questions from Google
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 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop