Also and perhaps more importantly, Google's approach is tied into its own ecosystem but anybody can join a Zoom meeting with just a link/code. Google had everything they needed but are too tied into the everything on the browser mindset and their own ecosystem to see they're shooting themselves in the foot before their horse is even out the door. At this point its too late, Zoom's aggressive pre-marketing, simplicity, and ubiquity is a real force now and everyone else is just playing catch up.
Disclaimer: I have not investigated how Zoom and other video conference apps work, but I do work with real-time video.
I don't see why the browser would be the limiting factor in performance / quality for videoconferencing.
What is the local client doing? Recording video and audio, and playing a real-time video stream. Sure, you want it to be low-latency, which involves its own bag of tricks.
But native-code libraries and/or hardware are doing all the heavy lifting (like H.264 encoding or whatever they use), the browser (and Javascript) is just the UI.
That might be because of my location or some other factor, but I really don't understand why people find Zoom so much better - it doesn't match my experience at all.