I am a heavy Google user. Not because I support Google but I use their products because of their utility.
I use Search, Chrome, Gmail, Calendar, Contact, Drive, Play Books, Analytics, Maps, Keep, Meet, YouTube, Translate, Authenticator, Android, Pixel and ChromeCast.
There isn’t a day I live without Google.
I am not here to debate about good or bad of Google being so integrative into our lives.
I am more interested in visualising a super app that Google could possibly build to maximise my utility of its products all in one place.
The potential of a super app came to me when Google launched its Google Pay app. I have always thought that Facebook would be the first to launch a super app, but now seemed to me that Google has surged ahead.
Google Pay
Google Pay has a lot of potential to connect local businesses with consumers. Google Maps have location information on many businesses – businesses can submit their addresses, opening hours and contact numbers to Google. Google can in turn display these details when someone searches for these businesses. Moreover, Google allows users to rate and review businesses.
We can already see this in the current Google Pay whereby they can push products and services from nearby businesses to you. You can use Google Pay to make the order and payment directly.
Google Pay allows PayNow where you can use Google Contact to find a friend to transfer money to or use a business UEN to pay. Google Pay also logs all the transactions you have made and this is convenient without you recording your expenditures. I think it can go one step further to include SGFinDEX integration – allowing users to pull all CPF, IRAS, HDB, and banks into Google Pay.
Google Invest
Google Finance offers a lot of stock data. It would be great to have it all in one super app so that I can search for stock information and follow up with the news revolving the stocks I have interest in. Google should also offer brokerage services to let me buy and sell stocks and use my Google Pay to fund the investments.
Lastly, I think users won’t mind investing in a Google RoboInvest function. Throw in the legendary AI functions from DeepMind to manage our money and we may be looking at a winner.
Google Shopping
Not sure if you noticed, you can see product listings directly from Google Search results now. Google is in the right place to become a meta-ecommerce player, aggregating product listings from direct sellers as well as from ecommerce platforms such as Amazon, Lazada and Shopee.
This would make the super app so powerful because the user does not need to check prices across various shopping sites to get the best deal. And let’s not forget about using YouTube livestreaming to promote products.
Google Trips
Have you book an air ticket and receive the information in your Gmail account? Did you realise the itinerary was automatically inserted into your Google Calendar?
Do you know there’s an app called Google Trips? Try it if you haven’t.
Now, you can even book flights and hotels directly on Google Search. You no longer need Skyscanner, Booking.com and many others.
Below are screenshots whereby you can search and compare flights, and book the tickets directly.
And here’s what the hotel booking module looks like:
Lastly, you get all the trip information, suggestions and reviews. Bye bye Tripadvisor!
Google Games
I wrote about cloud gaming previously and Google Stadia is one of the contenders. Google is pretty new in gaming (except serving gaming apps on Play Store) but a super app can help it gain more users.
And don’t forget about game streaming.
YouTube is already the second largest game streaming platform (in the West) after Twitch. Put it into the super app and we can watch and play along conveniently.
Google Music
YouTube launched a premium music service and it is no surprise that it’s going after Spotify for some market share. It will only make sense for the super app to include this feature.
Since we are already in the Google ecosystem, give us a discount for the music subscription or sell it as part of the bundle serivce! And together with Google Home speakers, anyone can have a private concert at home.
Google TV
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Google can take on Netflix that easily because of the latter’s heavy investments into original films.
But Google can provide a meta-streaming service on the other hand – stream from any provider you have subscribed to. With Chromecast, we can easily catch the show on TVs and projectors.
And don’t waste the potential of YouTube – integrate it into the super app and enable live streaming of news, sports and what not.
Google Work
No one expects anyone to mount a serious challenge to Microsoft when it comes to office productivity programs. Many have tried and many have failed. But Google’s efforts have been commendable – Gmail is a winner. Google Sheets, Slides and Docs have been getting some traction.
Dr Wealth has chosen Google Workspace for our email needs, cloud storage and file collaboration. I believe this is a growth area for Google as many individuals are used to Gmail and Drive, it would be easy for businesses to adopt them for work too.
Google Chat
The last thing that is missing is a chatting function. Communication is important we are so used to chat now. We need that on top of Gmail. In fact, Google already offers two chatting apps
- Google Hangouts – this is for individual accounts
- Google Chat – this is for businesses (Google Workspace users)
Google Hangouts works more like WhatsApp – the usual chatting functions and video calls.
Google Chat works more like Slack – it offers rooms, saved chat history and the ease of sharing files.
Make chat a core function in the super app and voila, the work of art is finally complete!
Give me a super app, Google!
I think Google is in the best position to create a super app in the west. It has many of these functions already and it is a matter of integrating them.
There’s no harm trying for this super app while making the individual apps available too.
What say you? Would you want a super app?
