[lukeschlather]

One thing I can quantify directly: in Zoom's native Windows app I can reply to a question and share my screen essentially instantly. That is to say I can do like "you can see here" and I've shared my screen before I've finished speaking, in the Google Meet PWA I have to say "here let me show you..." and pause while I wait for the screen share UI to load, I find the button to share the correct screen, and go.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Zoom saves me 5 minutes out of every 30 in meetings, in fact it might be conservative. And this isn't just a question of the chips (though native Zoom does make better use of it) but also display, audio input/output, even global keyboard shortcut handling.

[throwitaway1123]

After some of the CVEs linked to the Zoom desktop clients I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole [1][2], but I don't want to move the goalposts since we're talking about performance here. It's hard to tell whether or not the disparity is due to a Screen Capture API performance issue, or just bad engineering from the front end team at Google Meet, or even just bad UI design. Hiding features behind buttons and menus will always add a noticeable delay to an action, but that's just bad UI design, not a technical problem.

> but also display, audio input/output, even global keyboard shortcut handling.

I personally have never had a display or audio hiccup that I could attribute to a browser limitation. I don't even own a device with a display powerful enough to max out Youtube.com's 8K video resolution limit. I'm not sure why you've had issues with keyboard shortcuts. Keyboard events are well established and widely supported [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=zoom+vulnerability

[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/KeyboardEve...

[lukeschlather]

All I can tell you is that Google Meet is thoroughly inferior to native Zoom, and the browser-based Zoom is also inferior. If you don't use both apps professionally, you don't have a feel for what it means to rely on such features working for effective communication, you don't have a basis for comparison. It's hard to quantify the cost of security, and it's equally hard to quantify the cost of bad UX.

Definitely during the pandemic - good UX meant I got to feel more present with friends and family and that was well worth any security cost.

[throwitaway1123]

I've used Zoom professionally in the browser literally within the past week, and it ran smoothly. We can trade anecdotes here, but it won't be very productive.

What I can tell you is that I felt at ease using Zoom in the browser knowing that I wasn't opening my computer up to a remote code execution vulnerability. Your UX concerns are a bit nebulous, but I'd be willing to bet that the risk assessment departments at most organizations could quantify the cost of a hacker gaining access to one of their employee's computers. I also used Zoom during the pandemic but I wasn't doing a ton of screen sharing (I was more interested in seeing my friends and family members faces rather than their screens).

[lukeschlather]

Another thing is that the native Windows app can support 50 simultaneous video streams, which makes it possible to see more people. I was in dance parties during the pandemic with enough people that it meant that I could see 50 realtime streams of people dancing. It wasn't the same as being in a room with 50 other people dancing in sync, but it was better than only seeing 25 people at once. My problems aren't so much nebulous as too numerous to explain, I could go on for a while.

Of course a lot of this is Zoom vs. Google Meet, I'm sure a lot of the things I like about Zoom work fine in the browser - but not as well as with the simultaneous video streams limitation.

You can cost out security, but a lot of the things that I love about Zoom's native app are truly priceless - it means I can see and hear more of people I care about. Another thing is supporting dual monitors with different screens, it makes it very easy to rearrange and see more than one person I want to see at a glance. You can do it with multiple browsers and so on, but it's more fiddly and you spend more time fussing with the screens, which means less time actually paying attention to the people.

[throwitaway1123]

We might simply have different value systems because I could never justify putting myself at risk of a data breach in order to badly simulate the experience of attending an actual social event and dancing with other human beings. That feels very dystopian to me.

We're getting really deep into the intricacies of Zoom and Google Meet here, and I feel like we're losing the larger plot. If you have a battle station set up for Zoom parties with multiple monitors with 50 simultaneous dancers that you need to keep an eye on, and you don't mind the security risks, then maybe you represent a specific edge case, but I think the vast majority of software users have different requirements that web browsers satisfy handily.

[lukeschlather]

You're at risk of a data breach the moment you connect your computer to the Internet. You need to do a complete threat model and explain how Zoom contributes to that risk, and weigh that against the benefits. If you have zero tolerance for a data breach you should delete the data so no one including you may access it. Zoom is reliably effective at transmitting data, you can use less reliable methods but Zoom deliberately often makes the choice that delivering data is preferable to not delivering data. I think this is a valid choice and in security we sometimes have to say "would I prefer to open myself up to attack, or would I prefer not to deliver this message at all?" Both are valid choices in different circumstances. Practically speaking I have conversations in public places all the time and I don't stress about the possibility that someone might be recording me with a parabolic microphone.