You are a PM responsible for the restaurant section of Google Maps. How would you collect and validate restaurants' hours of operations?

To ensure accurate and comprehensive restaurant hours on Google Maps, I would employ a multi-pronged approach:

1. Prioritize Business-Provided Data: Restaurants themselves are the most authoritative source. I'd focus on incentivizing businesses to claim and manage their profiles, ensuring they provide and regularly update their hours directly. This could involve features that make it easy for them to input and verify hours, perhaps even integrating with their existing POS or scheduling systems.

2. Leverage User Contributions: Crowdsourcing from Google Maps users is crucial for broad coverage and real-time updates. I'd implement robust systems for users to suggest edits to hours, including mechanisms for verifying these suggestions. This could involve requiring multiple users to confirm an edit or using AI to detect inconsistencies.

3. Utilize Google's Internal Data & AI: Google has vast datasets and AI capabilities. I'd use these to cross-reference and validate hours from various sources, identify potential discrepancies, and even infer hours where direct data is missing, always flagging these for verification.

Validation Strategy:

• Source Authority: Prioritize data from verified business owners, followed by highly-rated user contributions, and finally AI-inferred data.
• Consistency Checks: Implement algorithms to detect conflicting hours from different sources and flag them for review or automated resolution.
• User Feedback Loops: Continuously monitor user reports of incorrect hours and use this feedback to refine data accuracy and identify problematic sources.
• Coverage & Popularity: Initially focus on high-traffic and popular restaurants to maximize impact, gradually expanding coverage. Accuracy is paramount, and a conservative approach (e.g., erring on the side of caution if hours are uncertain) is preferable to displaying incorrect information.