Whats interesting to me is that all the big players had Video meeting software that is exactly like Zoom, more or less, pre pandemic, and they were still losing out to Zoom, just at a much slower rate. I recall Zoom pre pandemic was still a profitable business[0][1]. Not the gang busters it was during the pandemic, no, a good, profitable business none the less. So whether Google or Microsoft or Slack can win now is debatable. They should have won this out before hand too, if you look at how things are stacked on paper. I don't know that the pandemic has changed the fact that these businesses are playing catch up in users minds.
Ironically, if anyone is going to threaten Zoom, its likely to be Microsoft with Teams, and only because so many organizations are already on Office 365 and Microsoft seems to be sinking some sales channel hooks into Teams specifically, and arguably Teams is good enough and has most of the same extension points as Zoom does, including its own add on store and API for most major integrations[2][3][4].
It seems Google is having a lot less luck here, first hand experience being that every business I've worked for in the last few years have been Google Workspace customers, yet still prefer to use Zoom over Google Meeting, despite Google Meeting being effectively free with the rest of the Google Workspace product.
I'm still mind boggled that Slack didn't capitalize on video meetings, they had all the technology and know-how, however execution matters like anything else, and I don't think they've been able to entirely execute on adding strong robust video offering to their core product.
It was not exactly like Zoom. Zoom was/is the smoothest experience for participants, especially participants who are not in video conferences regularly.
Before Zoom, it was always 10-15 minutes at the start of each meeting getting people online, able to see and hear, resolving questions, calling them out of band on the phone to walk them through getting started. Most of that didn't happen with Zoom.
I hate online video conferences, but Zoom is the least bad experience of the ones I've used.
Zoom has done well but the bundling of video conferences by microsoft and google will likely win out in the end. All it takes is a single botched update or more bloat in the software to have others try an included option. My company is on google workspace and quite frankly love the ease of being able to click a button to create and join a meet in next to zero spin up time.
I loathe it when 3rd parties send a damn zoom or teams link cus they always want me to default to using their app that has settings/config issues with my hardware, etc...
Most of the ultra large 10k+ employee companies seem to not mind paying for both though. My wife works at big oil and they use teams internally cus it's included but then use zoom with external cus it's "cool".
> I'm still mind boggled that Slack didn't capitalize on video meetings, they had all the technology and know-how, however execution matters like anything else, and I don't think they've been able to entirely execute on adding strong robust video offering to their core product.
I find that I’m using Slack’s “Hangout” features more and more often, especially for ad-hoc 1:1 meetings.
Intentionally or not, they seem to be taking an approach that allows them to embed themselves more deeply into work culture one piece at a time.
Ironically, if anyone is going to threaten Zoom, its likely to be Microsoft with Teams, and only because so many organizations are already on Office 365 and Microsoft seems to be sinking some sales channel hooks into Teams specifically, and arguably Teams is good enough and has most of the same extension points as Zoom does, including its own add on store and API for most major integrations[2][3][4].
It seems Google is having a lot less luck here, first hand experience being that every business I've worked for in the last few years have been Google Workspace customers, yet still prefer to use Zoom over Google Meeting, despite Google Meeting being effectively free with the rest of the Google Workspace product.
I'm still mind boggled that Slack didn't capitalize on video meetings, they had all the technology and know-how, however execution matters like anything else, and I don't think they've been able to entirely execute on adding strong robust video offering to their core product.
[0]: https://investors.zoom.us/news-releases/news-release-details...
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/06/zoom-earnings-q1-2020.html
[2]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/03/1...
[3]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/platform/sam...
[4]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/find-teams-apps-d...