This is how I would approach this problem

First, define what Google map is used for

1. It’s a navigation tool to find shortest/fastest route

2. It helps in providing information about Traffic congestion so that you can plan your travel

3. Time estimation for various mode of travels such as Public Transport, Bikes, Cars, Walking etc

4. Information about what Public Transport you can take to reach from Point A to Point B

5. A platform for advertisers

Second, Let’s look at the Personas who are using Google Maps

1. Office Travelers – Normally, use it for same Point A to Point B everyday to know the traffic details and time estimation

2. Leisure Travelers – Heavy users who visit various places on Bikes/Cars

3. Logistics People – To make deliveries to various places

4. Occasional Travelers – They don’t know the way to reach to Point B from Point A so they lookup this information in Gmaps

5. Advertisers – To attract people to their products/services

Let’s focus on one of these personas

1. Leisure Travelers

Let’s look Customer Journey map of a Leisure Traveler

A. Research Phase – Leisure traveler search for the place in the Web or know about the place from friends or find a place in a blog etc

B. Plan – Check Distance on Google maps and Then book hotel on a different App

3. Travel – Travel on a given date and constantly using Gmaps for directions

4. Feedback – Provides feedback after the travel is done

Let’s jot down pain points for Leisure Traveler

A. Currently, the process for Leisure Traveler is very transactional. He/She needs to know the place beforehand. He/she comes and search the place and then comes back later for another place

B. Leisure Traveler has a disconnected experience since he/she has to navigate between multiple applications to search places and book hotels

Solutions to solve these problems and generate revenue:

1. Start a premium paid service aimed to provide following value add

a. Recommendation to Leisure Traveler based on its interests

b. Recommendation based on user segment he/she belongs to

c. Support services for any help during the travel

2. Tie up with aggregator such as Make my trip to provide integrated search. Charge a convenience fees to Aggregators for providing them access to customer base

Trade Offs:

1. People may not buy it so we can start with a free trial and let people cancel the subscription without any questions. Once people cancel, we can collect the feedback on why are they leaving and incorporate that feedback into premium feature to make it better

2. Things may get cluttered with the integrated search but I think designer can be a little innovative here to take care of the UI.

Clarification questions:

Do we want to increase revenue in a particular geographical area? on a particular Google map service?

Let’s assume the answer is no and no.

Well then, our goal would be to increase revenues in general.

First I would like to describe how Google maps create revenue today, then move to describe the types of users of Google maps, discuss their pain points, and come up with solutions.

Google Maps makes most of its revenue from search ads that are displayed based on the user search. An additional source of revenue is selling dynamic mapping data to various data consumers such as municipal traffic control offices.

Let me think for a couple of minutes on the user groups.

I will describe Google Maps users by their goals. I recognize that some of these groups may overlap:

1. People who use G-M for navigation either walking or driving

2. Finding a Point of Interest, such as a restaurant, coffee, grocery store, gas station etc

3. Owners of PoI who list their locations to G-M

4. Data consumers, which buy data from Google Maps. Such data may include municipalities, mapping companies, police, analyst companies

Let me think some more about where I would like to focus.

I would like to focus on user group which searches for PoI, and specifically those in search of restaurants.

I think this is a pretty large group with some real pain points we can address.

I wouldn’t want to explore the data consumers group as this may entail privacy issues.

Let’s look at the pain points of people looking for restaurants on Google maps:

1. It is a painstaking process to find a restaurant, you have to read through the recomendations

2. Once you eventually find one, it may ha no availability at your desired time

3. People may wonder what is their best option for arriving at the restaurant, take a car? public transportation? What’s the parking cost?

4. Sometimes ordering food can be hard as the menu is long, and the person may not be familiar with all meals and ingredients

5. We need to wait to get a bill when we’re already done eating and ready to leave

Since our goal is to improve revenues, I’ll peak problems 2 and 5.

Let’s talk about the solution.

1. Google can partner with various restaurant table ordering service providers such as OpenTable. Through APIs, Google would be able to check the availability of a restaurant and book a place.

2. After finding a restaurant on Google Maps, a customer will get an option to reserve a place using one or more of these partners.

The user flow can start with a call-to-action shown on a specific restaurant listing: “Reserve a place?”  followed by a simple form with time and number of people etc.

3. We can also save time on searches by adding a filter option to list only restaurants in which this service is offered and the restaurant has an available place at the desired time. Alternatively, we can add an indication on each listing ‘Available’ if there are available places in the coming hours.

4. We can also extend the integration with the partners to also add a seamless checkout process

I would start the MVP with 1,2,3.

The revenue would come from charging the partners for the referrals.

To summarize:

Google can add a table reservation service using partners and get referral fees.

Not only this would add revenue, it will also improve user experience.

I will track the revenue generated by these users compared to the revenue generated by this same user group without this service.

I will also monitor their engagement, have they started doing more restaurant search with Google maps?

First it is beneficial to understand how Google Maps makes money today.  Since I don’t know I would probably list all that comes to mind.

Brainstorm

1. Web-sites that use Google Maps services to offer location service and driving direction on their web-sites
2. Google Maps provided location services needed in applications such as shipping cost calculation for a direct selling manufacturer, distributor, or small business.
3. Advertisements when displaying the Google Map with the search results.  Advertisement can be context-sensitive, if searching for hotels, other hotels with price near the location are displayed, same for restaurants, cleaning services, etc

Ask the interviewer if he would be interested in diving into one specific area and look revenue increasing opportunities. Most likely the interviewer will give me the choice.

Focus on Google maps that need Location Services:

First focus is on the selling motion, how can the service be sold to increase revenue.

1. Structure various bundle options, from simplest service to more complex.
2. Offer some more complex services as add-ons a la cart, for direction service, allow to include an add-on that estimates the time to drive/walk, provides detour recommendation in case of traffic congestions
3. Charge per usage, over various plans that have max usages (call of service) to allow a start small and grow approach

Second increase value-add with new features.  Basically provide additional value-add services for B2B usage scenarios that need location data.

1. Introduce a new tax calculation service based on seller and buyer location and types of goods sold
2. Introduce a service that calculates shipping cost based on distance, weight/size of goods shipped
3. Provide a service that validates addresses stored for customer records
4. Provide a service that recommends optimized transport routes between manufacturing locations based on the traffic situation
5. Service that calculates optimized delivery route of goods to customers