Evaluate the upsides and downsides of building a super app — an app having all major B2C features including entertainment, e-commerce, food ordering, hotel booking, cab booking, chat, holiday planning, gaming, med ordering, service booking, etc.

A super app that integrates all major B2C services in one place, either Built in-house (like Amazon expanding into multiple domains) or Acting as an aggregator (onboarding services from external players, like Google integrating travel and shopping).

Assuming a hybrid approach and building for Google. First-party + Third-party Services - Some features will be built internally, while others will be aggregated from partners.

• For Users: Seamless, one-stop solution for all their daily needs.

• For Business:

  • Reduce customer acquisition costs (leverage existing Google ecosystem).

  • Increase engagement & stickiness.

  • Upsell/cross-sell services - driving more revenue.

  • Dominate the B2C landscape by owning the full journey from search to transaction.

• AI Agent: A conversational AI layer to process user queries and automate actions.

• Tightly coupled with Google Search, Google Maps, Assistant, Pay, Shopping, Travel, and Ads to convert searches into transactions.

Who is the user?

• Existing Google users (Search, Maps, Assistant, Play Store, Shopping, Pay, etc.).

• Any consumer looking for an all-in-one digital experience.

Conclusion: Success depends on delivering a seamless AI-driven experience that competes with dedicated service apps.

Conclusion: Technically feasible for companies like Google, but AI maturity, regulations, and partner dynamics pose challenges.

Conclusion: Strong business case, but managing partner relationships will be a key risk factor.

• For a company like Google or Amazon, building an agentic super app is feasible and has strong business potential.

• Challenges to consider:

  1. User adoption—changing habits from app-based to AI-driven interactions.

  2. Regulatory scrutiny—especially around AI-driven recommendations, financial transactions, and privacy.

  3. Partner conflicts—companies like Uber, Zomato, and Airbnb may resist integration if Google starts competing with them.

• The opportunity lies in converting search intent into transactions seamlessly and cross-selling across multiple services in a frictionless manner

1. I am assuming question is more on if this should be done and pros and cons and not how ? Yes
2. Also the app would be done by Google ? Yes
3. The intention is to include major B2C features irrespective of the fact if Google does it now or not ? Yes

1. Evaluate if such an app aligns with vision & mission of the company.
2. For each of the stake-holders, I would look at the Upsides & Downsides.
   1. Stakeholders are Google As a company itself.
      1. Strategic Evaluation - I would use Porter's Five Forces to check business environment to see if this is a sound strategy.
      2. Business Evaluation - I would then look at how this app can impact Google in terms of revenue, costs and other intangible things
      3. Execution Evaluation - I would then look at Strengths & Weaknesses that Google have which can impact execution.
   2. Product, development, QA and Engineering Teams
   3. Consumers

1. Strategy Evaluation

2. Business Evaluation

3. Execution Evaluation

Clarifying questions:

• This is a mobile or web app? I’m going to assume it is a mobile app

• Going to assume the user base is global

Will evaluate both sides based on some dimensions that would be useful to stakeholders:

1. Revenue upside

2. User experience

3. Execution - technical and logistics

4. Competitive differentiation

    

Upside:

• If we are able to ship an app of this magnitude I think revenue would definitely increase a lot due to the many areas that the app can service. Execution of the app is key since the user experience can seem very convoluted and complicated with many use cases tied into one. To recognize the revenue upside, the execution and user experience has to be great

• From a user experience side - users could potentially find the utility of a app like this pretty useful. A single vendor to order and receive services for. This is not as far fetched as one would think. Consider Amazon - they do grocery delivery, e commerce retail with all kinds of products, develop their own clothing line, hardware business, streaming music/video services

  • ANother benefit from for the user is that they obtain customer service from a single source for all their services. A concierge service that offers higher levels of CS could be an added stream of revenue

  • Another benefit for users would be that these businesses are often complementary - ie based on user behavior ie entertainment choices, food otdering - the app could provide recommendations for vacation experiences and suggest times to purchase vacations and flights based on preferences

• Execution - this will mainly be a huge challenge so I will reserve it for my downside analysis.

• Competition - if we can execute, this app could be one of the most innovative apps in the world. Prob no other company could pull this off and so this could have a large competitive advantage over other players. WIll need to watch out for govt anti competition laws and could get into trouble with govt regulations.

  • Differentiation would be the one stop shop for all online services

  • SIngle vendor with a consistent user experience for all services

  • SIngle point of customer service

     

Downside:

• Revenues could suffer due to lack of focus in the business. The amount of people and logistics to make all these mini businesses successful would be large. In reality picking a few related, high potential businesses to target in an app would most likely generate more revenue than an app with many businesses like this

• User experience will be difficult to get right with so many businesses combined into a single app. The app would feel clunky - it would be very easy to develop different parts fo teh app in isolation and cause the UX to be disjointed

• Execution - would be a huge challenge. Eng wise this would require a large eng team. Even if there was a shared platform with a lot of shared infra and components, the complexity of designing something like this is large. Coordination between the diff eng teams would be very challenging as well. Creating a unified business strategy that allows the company to appear unified would also be a very difficult challenge. Finally business logistics would be very complicates as the business appear pretty diverse, ie gaming is not very related to hotel booking, cab sharing. All of these mini businesses would almost operate on their own and are diverse enough that logistically operations may not be able to be shared between mini-businesses

Conclusion

• I would recommend against creating a mega app like this. Instead I would focus on some high value businesses that were complementary

  • Travel and leisure app - news and media on vacation destinations, experiences with additional complementary businesses like vacation reservations, food reservations and recommendations, service bookings, ride sharing integration, e2e transportation reservations, user bulletin boards to discuss vacation ideas and planning

  • This would focus the business more on some high value use cases which should have higher revenue potential than a jack of all trades

  • User experience would be much better since the app wouldn’t be so complicated and still benefit from s single point of CS for services that are complimentary

  • Execution would be less challenging from eng and logistics standpoint

1. Clarify: 
   1. Is this super app built by Google? Assume yes.
   2. Is this app for a mobile device or a specific channel (desktop, iPad, etc.)? Assume mobile.
   3. Is there a strategy / goal that is motivating Google to build this app (ex. gain new users, increase revenue, etc.)? Assume I as the PM will have to choose this goal. (This answer is tailored towards the goal of getting more users and consequently being able to run ads / drive revenue.)
2. Describe the Product: Google is building a super app that meets all of a user's needs in the B2C space. Within each of the categories listed, there are many builds needed to meet the customer's needs. For example, within the "entertainment" category, Google could build virtual / digital entertainment: movies, etc. or it could build ways to book movie theatre tickets, play tickets, etc.
3. Strategic Evaluation Framework: I will evaluate the upsides and downsides of this app based on this high level framework:
   1. Alignment to Google's mission
   2. Strengths (broken further down by strengths for Google and strengths for user)
   3. Weaknesses (broken down further by weaknesses for Google and weaknesses for user)
   4. Opportunities for Google
   5. Threats to Google 
4. Strategic Evaluation: 
   1. Alignment to Google's Mission: 
      1. Google aims to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible / useful. A super app aligns to this mission in that the app brings brings together all sorts of information and makes it accessible to the end user. The user can access all this information in a single space.
      2. Google already has a diversity of apps (ex. Google Docs, Gmail, Google Photos, Google Maps), which make it seem like it's already working towards the super app mission of bringing together all sorts of information and being needed in the user's life. A super app seems like an extension of their work. 
   2. Strengths:
      1. GOOGLE STRENGTHS: 
         1. INFORMATION: Google already has access to a lot of information (ex. Google search), which it can leverage to build this app.
         2. PERSONALIZATION: A super app gives Google more access to user data, which allows them to build a better personalized experience for the user, which enhances user experience.
         3. AD REVENUE: A super app provides Google more opportunities to serve advertisements to users, which drives revenue for the company. 
         4. USER ENGAGEMENT: In a giant ecosystem, the user is more likely to engage with other aspects of the app they may not have before. For example, if a user goes into the app to purchase an item through the eCommerce store, they may see Gaming within this app and may decide to explore Gaming after their purchaes.
      2. USER STRENGTHS:
         1. CONVENIENCE: User has 1 place to go for everything, which is convenient. There is no need for multiple apps. 
         2. TIME SAVE: User saves time by avoiding multiple apps and bouncing from app to app. 
         3. SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE: The user experience is likely better because the user does not need to do redundant actions (like login, authentication, update payment information, etc.) because hypothetically the features of the app should all talk to each other / share information
   3. Weaknesses: 
      1. GOOGLE WEAKNESSES:
         1. TEAM: 
            1. RESOURCES: The super app build requires multiple resources / forces expertise in many areas. 
            2. TEAM PARTNERSHIP: All these partners will need to coordinate well, and given the number of resources required to build such an app, it could be difficult.
         2. COST: It would be a high cost to Google to maintain all these experiences in one app. 
         3. TECH LIMITATIONS: 
            1. CONTENT LIMITS / QUALITY: There may be limits to how much you can physically build into a super app, so experiences may be less up to par in terms of quality. 
            2. CONTENT RENDERING: It takes time to render a lot of content. A slower rendering time will be a poor experience for the user. 
            3. MEMORY / RAM: This app will likely require a lot of memory / storage on Google's end and the user's end.  
            4. SERVER REQUESTS: With a super app, there will likely be a lot of users / lots of server requests at the same time, which increases the likelihood of the app crashing.
         4. LEGAL: 
            1. RULES / REGULATIONS: If this app were to run in multiple countries (assuming yes), there are a number of legal implications / rules and regulations that the app would have to adhere to across markets. It will be difficult to ensure compliance for each app feature across every market.  
            2. DATA SECURITY: Google will have to take extra precautions to ensure that the user data is safe across multiple features. Given the breath of the app, it may be harder to do so. (For example, is my payment information secure in both the Gaming feature and the eCommerce feature.) If there are third party partners, Google will have to ensure that each third party (assuming there may be a lot), is using data securely. 
      2. USER WEAKNESSES: 
         1. DATA SECURITY: User may be concerned over giving all their data to Google. They may also want to understand who has access to my data, and given the breath of the app, there may be a number of third parties that have access to this information, which the user may not like. 
         2. UI: User may be overwhelmed by too much app content. (Design here is paramount to avoid user confusion.)
         3. UX: It will be a poor experience for the user if the app is slow or crashes a lot because of the volume of information.
   4. Opportunities: Google has the opportunity to gain a bigger footprint / gain more users. Ultimately, more users, will allow them to run more ads, which drives revenue for the company.
   5. Threats: Within each of the apps features, there are already big tech companies that present sizeable competition. (For example, within eCommerce space, Shopify is a big competitor.) There are also big tech companies already taking steps towards becoming the "super app" to the its end users. For example, Apple has expanded its reach with apps like Apple Maps, Apple Music, Apple Fitness+, etc. Amazon has also expanded it's reach as well. It's moving from being a traditional mass online shop to offering experiences, like Amazon Prime Video, etc. 
5. Summary: Overall, I think a super app is in line with Google's mission, and it is already building multiple apps that allow it to integrate in multiple aspects of a user's life. Given the tech limitations, I believe a mobile super app is likely not the right approach for Google to take. This app may be better suited in a different channel, like desktop or voice. (Within the mobile space, it may be better for the app to be split into multiple apps.)