I think that people over estimate potential damages of being your competitors customer. Google is not going anywhere, with or without this contract, and if they want to make an investment in video conferencing, they already have more than enough capital & resources to do that.
Staying away from GCP purely because it is under google would be a crazy decision
https://blog.google/products/meet/bringing-google-meet-to-mo...
Opinion my own not Google's.
Google is really, really late to game here. What was Google doing for the last 2 months while Zoom capitalized on our situation?
That's just a shady deal, especially if they end up trying to retire Hangouts chat and so normal users can no longer use free video / voice call services that they've come to rely on having for like 10+ years now.
Don't get me wrong - I love Meet on my business accounts and along with all the other Apps in G Suite, it is well worth paying for. But I also value the fact that normal ass standard Google users have been able to have access to a semi-decent video and voice conferencing platform for over a decade now. I hope that doesn't change come September.
Regardless, if I (and I assume many beside myself) need a video conferencing solution, I would have found one by now and no longer need a "me, too" product.
Some might consider Zoom giving Google, Amazon, or Microsoft insights into their business as the crazy decision.
You can steal data, code, and customer lists.
Amazon and Walmart are selling the exact same products, they're competing head to head for every sale trying to get the customer to not shop on the other.
I think people are taking it seriously.
This isn't strictly the case. They do push some of their data to other SaaS providers hosted on AWS.