Should Google acquire Quora?

Company vision

• Google’s goal is to organize the world’s information

• Quora: a forum for asking questions and having users respond

  • Main use cases are: technical information, random social media-like posts, learning new things

Goals of acquisition

• Acquire more users

• Make Quora more informative

• Allow a better interface for users to respond to questions, rather than just using Google’s search algorithms (prioritize based on # of links to other sites and relevance)

• Enhance Google’s data? (unlikely since maybe Google can already access Quora’s information)

• Ad revenue on Quora itself?

• Link Google user information to Quora activity

User insights

• Quora users turn to quora before Google?

• Increasing amount of information on Google?

Market trends

• Forums continue to be a major source of info

• More conversations online

• Trend towards lots of new information

• Distrust of news...

Competitors

• N/A

Cons

• No new users

• Google already gets the data

• More likely to spread mis-information than good information

Open questions:

• How many users are going to Quora instead of Google? And how valuable are these users?

• Does Google already get access to Quora usage? And can we connect users’ quora behavior to their Google account? How valuable are these users?

Overall, seems like Google would not gain much from acquiring Quora given that most users are probably still starting at Google for their searches and then going to Quora if they can’t find what they’re searching for. Additionally, I would assume that Quora is more likely to be a place where mis-information can be spread since there are fewer checks and balances to make sure the most relevant information is surfaced. If regulating this information is something Google wants to get into, I could see an argument being made to acquire Quora but from a revenue and user acquisition standpoint, it seems unlikely to be worth the hassle.