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Google Keep is a free product to save, share notes etc. How would you make it a subscription product & monetize it?

Asked at Google over a year ago

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Product Strategy

Product Strategy

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Gold PM

Mar 28, 2020

A product strategy interview question like this can be approached in the following way.

Google Keep is a free product to save, share notes etc. How would you make it a subscription product & monetize it?

Interviewee: Just so that I understand the question, the goal is to improve "Google Keep" with the goal of monetization?

Interviewer: Yes

Interviewee: By monetization, can I assume revenue?

Interviewer: Okay

Interviewee: Google Keep is fairly mature product, can you help me understand more about its usage and any customer feedback that you have heard on this product so far?

Interviewer: We have not heard anything specific but the product continues to have medium to high engagement

Interviewee: Thanks for sharing that information. I will take a few seconds to think about the problem, and we can discuss more

Interviewee: As a next step, I am going to brainstorm a few customers, pick a user segment to focus based on TAM, willingness to pay, discuss some user needs and pain points, prioritize painpoints, and come up solutions, and finally recommend a solution. We can get into metrics after that if time permits.

Interviewer: Sounds good

1) Who are the customers?

Busy professionals - To make to-do lists, grocery lists, on-the-go thinking notes

Students - To take notes for classes

Stay at home parents - To make notes of daily tasks

Prioritize busy professionals based on 1) Dispensable income 2) Larger user base

2) What are their pain-points or user needs?

Let's think about the user journey to come up with pain-points or user needs

Open Google Keep, find an existing list or create a new list, add items to it.
Share it with collaborators
Find a note
Remember to use and access it at the right time

Make the to-do lists actionable via nudges
Be able to easily access notes via better organization
Be able to easily add items to it
Be able to easily import items to other platforms

Prioritize pain-points based on end-user impact, and hence would want to prirotize #1 so that customers can benefit from completing tasks in a timely manner and feel good about themselves:

3) Let's brainstorm some solutions for the pain point that we aligned on earlier:

1) Keep Reminder: Tool adds default dates based on categorization of notes and sends a reminder via text or an email or calendar

2) Keep Assistant: Apply ML on notes, and google assistant helps in various ways - reminds to get groceries when outside based on proximity to stores, offer to make a call to set up an appointment, and remind a user about remaining tasks at an opportune time on a daily basis or a weekly basis

3) Integration with Gmail, Maps, Speakers so that a user could access the relevant tasks at different locations so that they are reminded to complete them when they see them at different ingress points

As a next step, let's prioritize these solutions based on the ROI i.e., effort to build a solution vs. the end user impact

Solutions	User impact	Complexity
1	Low-medium (too many emails, may not get user's attention)	Easy
2	High (makes it really easy for customers to have actionable to-do lists)	High (Will need a lot of training data for the tool to get parse notes correctly, and suggest a right actionable item)
3	Medium (seeing their notes in the right location may help users to remember them and complete them in a timely manner)	Easy-Medium ( Integration is easy but the right customer experience i.e., frequency of showing keep notes, how to show them etc. is difficult)

Recommendation: Based on my analysis above, in the short term, I recommend solution #3 i.e., show keep notes at the right location in the right times, and solution #2, a Keep assistant, an intellligent way to boost up productivity in the long term!

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Gold PM

Jul 21, 2020

Interesting! I'm not a Google Keep (GK) user, so I have a few questions about the exercise. Want to make sure we're aligned on the product and on the question before I get started.

Does it also include reminders? Yes.
Is it integrated with other Google products such as Gmail? There are some integrations available.
Can you use it in multiple devices? Yes.
When you say "monetize it", are your referring to revenue or profit? Revenue.

Ok, great! First, I'd like to think about the mission of the product and the users. Then I'd like to brainstorm a few user pain points that we can address at a premium. Next, I'd like to prioritize them based on TAM and complexity of implementation. Finally, I'd like to price it.

1. Mission and user groups

Based on the information so far, I see Keep as super aligned with Google's mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. This can include public - e.g. web pages, links - and private information - e.g. user private google docs and sheets.

In terms of users, there are individual users and corporate users (part of G Suite). Given that corporate users already pay for G Suite as a bundle that is priced holistically, I will make the assumption that we will not increase the price of G Suite due to new features baing launched on GK, given that it represents a fraction of the value provided to corporate users in the Suite. I also haven't seen Google launch features for free and then start charging for them. I think that would betray users trust on the Google brand. Is that a fair assumption to make? Yes, please continue.

Users	Current Features	New features
Corporate	Included in GSuite	Upgrade to GSuite
Individual	Free	New Subscription

Ok, based on this information I would like not to change pricing for existing features and focus on creating value-added features for GSuite subscription upgrades, and turn Individual pricing into a fremium model that will give individuals access to these enterprise grade features.

2. User pain points + prioritization

Users	Pain Points	TAM	Value for users in TAM	Complexity
Corporate	I have to manually take notes during Google Meet sessions in Gmail and create GK action items.	# of people using GMeet * % who would benefit from this feature = # of Orgs using G Suite * Avg number of seats per Org * % who would benefit from this feature = 5.6M companies in US * 10% using GSuite * Avg 10 seats per org * 10% who would use this feature = ~500K	Very High (lots of meetings per day AND big time savings taking notes)	XL
Individual (personal commitments, shopping lists, etc)	I have to manually add items to a new shopping list each time I go shopping i.e. I can't keep a "running" list. It's not easy to turn my shopping list into an online order from a grocery store. Shopping items are not organized by category e.g. vegetables, toileteries, clothes, meats.	# of individual potential Keep users = # of people in US * % needing to keep reminders = 300M50% = 150M 150M % shoppers = 150M * 1 person shopping per household / Average 3 people per household = 50M 150M * % shoppers * % shopping mostly online = 50M (from previous) * 20% = 10M Same as (2.) = 50M	Small Medium Small	S XL M
Both	Having to cross-check between Gmail, Google Calendar, and GK to make sure I'm not missing any action/reminder.	Corporate: 80% of G suite users. Individual: 50% of Google Calendar users = # US population * % of population who are G Calendar users = 300M * 10% = 30M	Corporate: High (business users rely heavily on calendars and reminders to conduct their jobs). Individual: Medium.	XL

Based on the above, I would focus on the first pain point and give corporate users the option to automatically transcribe Google Meet calls, automatically save notes in GK, and make recommendations for action items (as GK reminders).

3. Pricing

Given that this could be a potentially costly product (transcription in real-time), I would consider the average cost of the service per G Suite seat per month, and apply a markup on it.

For example, if the average user has 10 meetings per month that are going to be transcribed into Google Keep, each meeting takes 30 mins on average, and the cost of transcription is $0.5 per meeting, then the cost per seat per month would be $5.

Then I would apply a markup of X% on top of it - e.g. 100% - so that the service would cost an additional $10 per seat per month on top of the original GSuite price for Corporate users. Individual users would be able to access it separately from GSuite for $10 per month as well. Although the interest from individual users is probably going to be small as a % of the user base, given that the user base is large, it might be significant as a % of total users of this feature.

Final Notes

Through use case analysis and prioritization, it became obvious that, at this time when remote work is booming, the biggest value we can add to users comes from saving users time by automatically transcribing video calls and taking action items. Each G Meet call will have GK notes and reminders tied to it. The estimated 500k addressable market in the Corporate segment could bring in $5M (500K * $10) in additional revenue per month to the business. And 50% of that will be profit.

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Platinum PM

Jun 10, 2021

Just for clarity, Google keep is a free product where customers can-

create notes, lists.
Share notes
Has capability to set reminders based on location & time.
Synchronizes across multiple devices like laptop, mobile app.
Its more of a personal use product and not a business product.

Our goal is to make it a subscription based product so as to generate revenue from it.

Customer segment who use keep:

Processionals who quickly want to take meeting notes or note down ideas before building on each of the points or while reading an article and want to quickly save it for future reference.
Young tech savvy users for creating lists for various reasons like shopping list, list of items to be taken while planning for a travel.

Strategic choices:-

Offer certain new premium features for which customers are asked to pay monthly/yearly subscription fees. Premium features like -
1. Organize notes in folders.
2. Search based on voice
3. Email the note or send the not as a hangout message to specific people.
4. Having option to save any article using Google keep chrome extension to specific labels/folders
5. Saving article for reading offline.
Restrict no. of notes/max size per note for free version and unlimited for billed version
1. For example at max u can have only 50 notes in free version with max size per note as 25 mb.
Monetize by showing personalized ads to the customers and launch a subscription product for ad free service.

Next would like to evaluate the choices based on below evaluation matrix:-

Customers:
1. Option 1: Customers using Keep for managing meeting notes, discussion points would be interested in paying the subcription fee. Also this option will ensure that that app remains as is for existing set of customers otherwise if some features are cut down in the free version, customers would be unhappy and might consider moving to a competitive app.
2. Option 2: This option of restricting storage space will cause some discontent but customers will eventually adopt if the size limitations are competitive enough and 2ndly since customers already have a lot of data on the tool thus has stickiness.
3. Option 3: This option will clutter the UI for existing customers and since competitive apps have free versions without ads thus we might loose customers to competition with this option.
Competition
1. There are many competitive products in the market which offer similar services like evernote, onenote and they also offer freemium models so going for a subcription model is not going to lead to a backlash from customers. It should be acceptable. Option 3 is something which is usually not clubbed in a notes keeping app and thus to remain competitive we should avoid option 3 as it might clutter the UI.
Alignment with Google's model
1. Option1/2: For other products like gmail, Google doc, sheets also u have free version with restricted space and functionality where as there is a premium version of gsuite with more storage space and premium functionalities thus it is alignment with the current business model Google has for other products.
2. Option 3: Is not in alignment with current model. Currently google does not show ads in applications like gmail, doc, sheets etc so showing ads in Keep would look weird and would spoil the UX as well.

Thus would recommend going for a freemium model. Where a Option 1 & 2 are implemented and available if subscription is taken by the customers.

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Gold PM

Jun 21, 2020

Clarifying questions

Can we consider other means of revenues or just the subscription?

NOTE: I am assuming we can also suggest some other ways of monetisation as well

There can be following ways to monetise a digital products

Adopting subscription based model
Charging upfront fee for download
Charging fee for lifetime
Advertisement
Licensing the product
Keeping the core features free but charging for extra features- charging premium subscription

Now if we talk about google, google is known for providing various products to assimilate your information or search something for free. Hence below mentioned option are clearly not a wayforward for google to monetize its google keep-

Charging the upfront fee for download
Licensing the google keep is also not an option here because if it would have been some technology specific use for some industry , google could have used this strategy to license the product to some organisations

Ways by which google can monetise google keep

Advertisements
Subscription model

Under subscription model

Core feature of google keep should be kept free but to avail extra features , user should be asked to subscribe

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Silver PM

Mar 21, 2025

Ask Clarifying Questions

Target Audience? Individual users, businesses, or both? - Both
Business Goals? Increase revenue, engagement? - Revenue while retaining engagement
Freemium vs. Subscription? - Freemium model

Product and Problem Definition

Google Keep is a free note-taking app that allows users to create, organize, and share notes, lists, and reminders.

Task at hand is to monetize the app and generate revenue

User Personas

1. End Users - Students, Professionals, Content Creators

2. Enterprise Users & Teams – Business professionals

Customer Pain Points

1. Limited organization features: No folders, formatting options, categorization

2. No collaboration tools such as cannot assign tasks, track progress, or comment on notes along with integration with Zoom or Microsoft Teams, Slack

3. Lack of AI-Powered insights

4. Limited offline access and storage

Reasons for Monetization (Business Viability)

High engagement with premium features
Google ecosystem integration access with Docs, Drive, Assistant, Gmail etc.
Competitive market
Increased productivity and growth in business

Solutions (Monetized Features/Premium Features)

1. AI-powered organization such as folders, sub-notes, formatting, categorization of files

2. Integration with tools such as Zoom, Teams to automatically take MOM

3. Option for task assignments, comments, version history

4. AI-Powered insights such as note summarization and reminders

5. Users can access and sync files offline

6. AI-driven search and retrieval in case of large collection of files

7. Integration across Google Workspace such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc.

8. Ads

Prioritize Solutions (Value vs. Effort)

1. High Value Low Effort: Features 2, 3, 5, and 7

2. High Value High Effort: 1, 4, and 6

3. High Value Uncertain ROI: Feature 8

Success Metrics

1. Number of users bought premium features

2. Number of active users

3. Retention Rate

4. Revenue: MRR & ARR

5. Customer complaints and CSAT

6. Number of users using AI-powered features

Summary

To monetize Google Keep, the following premium features should be improved: AI-powered features, collaboration tools, offline access, etc. This freemium model keeps basic features free while driving subscription revenue from power users and businesses.

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Platinum PM

Jan 9, 2022

Clarification

Is it google docs? Yes
Why do you want to monetize the product? Diversification of revenue model from ads to subscription based model
Is it applicable to all OS and web versions- Yes

Describe the product- Example google docs

It is used to add, update notes and share it to the different users which can be saved and edited by them.

All we need is to have a gmail ID to access it.

No need to save the data in pen drive or hard disk
Can be accessed from anywhere from any machine on the availability of internet
All type of text, videos phots can been edited and shared saved to the multiple users

User

Individual users student, professionals, small to medium scale businesses

Pain Point

High security for the confidential data is required. People do not trust easily to save the confidential information
Editing through multiple users is possible but how to communicate what needs to be edited within the same product. Frequent communication is missing within the same product
I do not want to hold the data for more than 3 years of time at data management is a tedious process and it may or may not becomes useless after certain point of time
I am staying in a place where there is poor connectivity of internet, still want to use the product

List of strategies

Allow the users to use the product for free for the first 10 documents or size of 10 MB. The user can use any features like save, share, update , add video, pics, giphys etc. comment or like on it. You can allow maximum 2 other users to edit the same
Regular subcription- Will provide added benefits like unlimited number of documents and notes can be created for an year with the above mentioned features. Maximum number of users who can work on the same document is 10
Premium subscription for an year that allows

the users to add unlimited documents, share it and allow any no. of users to simultaneously update the same.
Besides this some add on features are available in premium subscription like group chats, individual chats, instant phone call to the group members to communicate what needs to be updated and the progress.
You can keep the archive the data after 3 years but google takes the responsibility of managing the same if needed it can be retrieved.
Ability to work on the document offline and upload the same with updates once the internet is available. Same goes with the multi user feature. It will not allow the user to overwrite the content and manage the proper sequencing of the updates with the time stamp even in the offline mode.

We can also allow the users to refer the google docts to the new users and upon subscribing the same the existing free user will get the additional premium benefits for certain number of days.

Evaluation

Considering the different user segments I would like to go for the above 3 subscription based models as students might be low on money and want to go with free subscription model. Indeed they can boost the customer based using referral system. The professionals and business has different set of needs for which they will be ready to pay the subscription amount considering that there no new entrants in the market with these kind of features and product in the market. The competition will be with the other products like slack, teams, zoom for which the price is high and these are not used by uneducated or less educated people running the business in tier 2-3 cities or small towns. Indeed, the chances are high to convert these as potential customers because they still runs the process inefficiently through manual work.

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PM

Mar 25, 2020

The Job to be done by Google Keep - To ensure things get done, and readily available for reference ( How? Add reminders, notes, To-Dos, collaborate)

Typical Persona who uses Google Keep - Individuals who have access to multiple apps for their notes, and Google Keep is just another app. These indivudals are used to using free notes service and would not want to pay for it.

Value they recieve out of Google Keep - Reminders, Access notes from anywhere on cloud

Focus Persona: Professionals who would be ready to pay to ensure things dont slip by and get done. Also, Professionals are the category of people who would be ready to pay for such a service.
Strategy: Currently, Google offers its Gsuite offering to companies both big and small. They use the itnegrated ecosystem of Google for their mails, storage, etc.

Problems they face/User Cases/Opportunity:
1. Meeting Notes and Action items tracking
For every meeting users typcially take notes at a common location, or capture them in mails. Apart from notes, they also take some action items and assign to each individual. Once the meeting is done and the MOM+Notes are circulated, someone needs to manually track the completion of these action items later. Things could often lapse user attention

2. TBDs for a meeting prep
Users (especially executives) very frequently use Calendars as their source of truth of how busy they are, what meetings they have, is there anything they need to prepare for a meeting (maybe prepare collaterals, ppt, get some answers, etc). While their calendars gives them a way to understand when they are blocked, it fails to give them a picture of if there is anything they need to do to prep for the meeting.

Focusing on Feature 1: Meeting Notes and Action items tracking
Feature Details:
1. For every MOM sent for a meeting, every user who has an action item against him will have a corresponding calendar item to finish the taks before a certain date.
2. A user shall recieve reminders if the action item is not completed till the assigned date.
3. Capability to publish to all the meeting attendees when an action item gets complete.
4. Capability to publish to all meeting attendees when all action items are complete.

Monetary Model: Provide as an Add-on to the current model of Gsuite. Subscription cost can be additive.

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1 Feedback

Platinum PM

Mar 25, 2020

Hi Aditi,

I think you did a good job of realizing that this can be answered as a product improvement question. Basically, you descirbed how the product can be improved significantly for a particular user group and how it can enable you to charge a service fee.

I have a few feedback on how you can answer this question better:

- It's helpful to provide some explanation around why pain point #1 is chosen. It is a great chance for you to showcase your analytical and user empathy skills.

- It helps to list out a few more solutions and then do an evaluation of the solutions based on meaningful criteria such as impact to user, implementation cost, and revenue potential. This helps you present your ability to deal with multiple priorities

- After the evaluation of the solutions and picking your best solutions for monetization, suggest a metric that helps you measure the success of your product improvement strategy in achieving your goal (monetizing the product).

I hope you find my feedback useful.

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