Google Product Strategy: Whether and How to Build Location-Level Wi-Fi Quality Data

Google is considering building the ability to measure how good the Wi-Fi is at different locations. Should it put money into this, and if your answer is yes, how would you go about building it? ### Clarifying Questions - Which locations are in scope: public venues such as cafés, airports and hotels, people's homes, or coverage across a whole city? - Who would use the result first: people choosing where to go in Maps, Android phones deciding which network to join, or businesses and internet providers? - Does "quality" mean speed alone, or also reliability, latency, how easy the network is to join, and whether it is free? - Is there a revenue or strategic goal behind the idea, or is the framing mine to set? ### Part 1 — The investment decision Decide whether Google should commit resources to this capability, and justify the call. ```hint Ask why Google, not just why Wi-Fi Beyond whether people care about Wi-Fi quality, ask what Google already has that would let it measure quality better than anyone else, and what it would gain from doing so. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - The users and situations where knowing Wi-Fi quality in advance changes a decision - Google's strategic fit and advantage, set against the cost and the alternatives - Risks to privacy, accuracy and freshness, weighed into a clear recommendation ### Part 2 — Building it Assuming the answer is yes, explain how you would build it: what launches first, where the quality data comes from, and how you would know it is working. ```hint Decide where the numbers come from Before designing screens, work out how a quality reading for one location would be collected, checked and kept current, and what users would have to agree to share. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - A first use case and the product surface where it appears - Data sources, aggregation and privacy safeguards, including how readings stay accurate and current - A phased plan with success metrics and guardrails ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A decision that follows from stated criteria rather than enthusiasm for the idea - A clear link between the Part 1 recommendation and the scope chosen in Part 2 - Trade-offs between data coverage, accuracy and user privacy - Cases where a single quality score would mislead users ### Follow-up Questions - A café owner complains that their rating is low because of one slow afternoon. How does the system handle disputes and attempts to game it? - How would the plan change if regulators required explicit consent before any connection data is collected? - Would you ever share the data with internet providers or city governments? What would decide it?