[jchw]

This is quite a tangent but...

> Zoom, the app for ensuring the knowledge worker parts of an economy continue to work when there’s a pandemic,

How did Zoom achieve this status? I had literally never used or heard of Zoom at home or at work prior to the pandemic, and now many treat it as synonymous with video chat the way that workplaces use Slack for text chat. Was there some crazy marketing strategy?

[mc32]

Yes, they allowed companies and public institutions to sign up and use the product for free with quick on boarding. They basically set up a "use now pay later" approach where they allowed lots of leeway to let you figure out need and payments down the road.

The competition were charging by the user (you had to commit to some user license number) and you had to go through the regular onboarding process. Zoom was like you let us know what you need later. Let’s get you up and running and we’ll work out details later.

[OJFord]

And you could invite anyone, i.e. external 'users'/customers, whoever. Webex allowed that, but not e.g. Teams, which many would already have been paying for via Office365 (ironic name to have and lose on this one).

[Ocha]

Well, google was busy only supporting chrome browser for hangouts (yes you could have video in FF but it wouldn’t support blurring or any other advanced features it did in chrome), and Microsoft kept failing with Skype for Business.

End of day, when you needed an app for video conferencing that worked for everyone, your choice was mostly zoom.

And now we are here

[palata]

That's another question: when did blurring become a thing? It mostly sucks, and it feel like it's not that hard to make sure that you are fine with what's in your back... If you are not, just don't enable the video, right?

[TrevorJ]

Lots of people ended up suddenly working from home with little to no warning and had to make do with whatever home environment they had available, whether they had a home office or not. The simplest, least intrusive professional option was to use blur.

[sneak]

A lot of people are required to enable video to keep their job.

[twelve40]

true, I worked at a place that was super-anal about always having video on all the time. Funny enough, bigger companies I worked at often don't care. But it's probably good for "visibility" anyway.

[tyingq]

Because the bar was pretty low. GoToMeeting, WebEx, etc, were all significantly worse in UI, video stability, features, etc.

[palata]

Google Meet was there before the pandemic, and Jitsi (for an open source alternative) too.

[browningstreet]

Companies needed interoperability (sales, vendor conversations, etc) really fast in the pandemic and not being Google, Microsoft, etc., helped Zoom in a big way.

[dv_dt]

Google meet wasn’t far behind - but it was behind in quality vs zoom. And it wants to herd every user into getting a google account - if you wanted to just meet online with a random group of people zoom had the fewest hurdles.

[bombcar]

The simplicity of a non-ecosystem user joining is the key to zoom success.

[organsnyder]

They were well-positioned at the beginning of the pandemic, mainly because their client applications were so easy to install (in large part because of how they circumvented OS security features). Other solutions are better now, but they were in the right place at the right time.

[qbasic_forever]

It was in the right place at the right time. I had used zoom quite a bit before the pandemic. It was a great alternative to Google hangouts--it ran instantly from your browser and required very little fuss or setup (unlike Skype or desktop apps). Google killed and messed up their video chat apps and zoom was the only real option when the pandemic hit.

[twelve40]

no idea, subjectively I always liked hangouts (or whatever the crap it's called this week) much better.

Also, everyone's on gmail anyway so surprising google somehow just missed the boat on this huge competitor.

[paxys]

I don't believe they had any marketing. It's just that no other app was doing group video calls for free at that scale and with that quality at the start of the pandemic. It was the perfect no fuss solution available at the perfect time. Just create a call and copy over the link to whoever you want without them having to create an account.

[colordrops]

The alternative, WebEx, was even crappier at the time.

[OJFord]

That was not 'the' alternative. Skype, Teams (which subsumed it), Jitsi (which we used as a partially remote team prior to the pandemic and then inexplicably switched from to Zoom during), Discord was just starting to leak out of gamer-sphere, I think Slack already had group video calls, etc.

[colordrops]

In California where I live it was. Skype was used by virtually no one. Teams and Jitsi were minor players. Google meet did not yet have traction. Most companies were using WebEx.

[OJFord]

So as you say, most were already using something non-Zoom, that's the up-thread point - where did Zoom come from.

Also I doubt Teams was a minor player, in usage maybe but not availability - it has a free tier I think but otherwise comes with O365, which is obviously not minor. Having it doesn't mean you use Teams, but it does mean that it ought to be an obvious choice if you suddenly, newly, have a need for a product like that, as so many companies did.

[themoonisachees]

For what it's worth here in France every company I've worked at had o365 licences for email and everyone uses teams. I work as a sysadmin.

[Ocha]

WebEx. Lol

[TrevorJ]

Camera and mic worked without setup a lot more reliably in zoom than other platforms.