Recommend Google's Long-Term Strategic Bets and How to Prioritize Them
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Google, and leadership asks for your view on where the company should invest over the next five to ten years. Recommend the areas you would back, explain why Google is well placed to win in each, and say how you would tell whether the bets are paying off.
```hint Filter before you brainstorm
Decide first what the investment has to achieve for Google and which of its assets give it an edge others lack. Use those two filters to cut a long list of exciting areas down to a few you can defend.
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### Clarifying Questions
- Is the main aim to grow revenue, to protect the Search and advertising business, or to reduce Google's dependence on advertising?
- Should the recommendation target a particular region, such as emerging markets that are still coming online, or apply worldwide?
- Are Google Cloud and Alphabet's longer-range ventures, such as self-driving cars, in scope, or only Google's consumer products?
- Is there a budget limit, or is the question about direction and priorities?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A stated goal for the investment and the time horizon it implies.
- An honest inventory of Google's assets and weak spots, and which of them each candidate bet relies on.
- The major trends of the coming decade and a broad set of candidate bets, compared on explicit criteria such as size, Google's ability to win, strategic fit and risk.
- A focused recommendation with sequencing, milestones and success metrics for each chosen bet.
- Risks such as cannibalizing the core business, regulation and capital cost, with mitigations.
### Follow-up Questions
- If AI-generated answers mean people click fewer ads on Search, how would you manage the years in which revenue shifts?
- If capital spending had to be cut sharply, which of your bets would you drop first, and why?
- How would your recommendation change if the goal were reaching the next billion internet users?
- Suppose the exercise is framed instead as: you have just become Google's CEO, and you must set one company-wide roadmap for the next five years. How would you sequence your priorities year by year within that fixed horizon, and how would the answer differ from a PM's list of investment areas?
Overview: A product strategy question for product managers: recommend where Google should invest over the next five to ten years. It tests setting a goal for the investment, weighing Google's strengths and weak spots against long-term trends, comparing candidate bets on clear criteria, and committing to a focused plan with milestones and risks.