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Comment by progit | Hacker News Reader

I am very curious how Zoom took off out of nowhere at the very beginning of the pandemic. I believe I generally keep tabs on up and coming technology companies and never heard of Zoom until mid March. They kept popping up in media perhaps due to marketing effort? I still prefer Google Meet.

Edit: I am getting downvoted within seconds. This is just me asking an honest question. Hmmm...guess CCP got to keep Zoom alive.

Edit: My intention was not to be conspiratorial. I am genuinely curious how they rose so fast and what other factors played into their success.

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Zoom didn't take off "out of nowhere", it was used by plenty people and places before too.

One of it's main strengths probably was how easy it is to use (e.g. plenty of the competitors you can't just sign up for a free account and then invite people without an account) while working very well (which many of the WebRTC-based competitors in the "easy and free to use" category struggle(d) with). And then it quickly becomes self-reinforcing: if people get introduced to it they'll use it too unless they have a good reason to seek something else, which gave it a boost once video conferencing suddenly was something many people needed. (by now Microsoft Teams has anecdotally taken over lots of the corporate use, tech-y communities have gotten around to bring their own jitsi and BBB instances up, ...)

Understood and I read about why it’s a superior product. However, we all know superior products do not always win. I don’t think the meteoric rise in Zoom can be entirely attributed to its product. For example, why did schools adopt Zoom instead of Google Meet when Google was already deeply integrated to remote learning? That’s a big puzzle for me. There was something else going on be it stealth marketing or something else.

You can't really deeply integrate any of Google's communication offerings aside from Gmail because they keep introducing and killing off new things so often. People weren't using that stuff in the first place. Zoom is one thing that offers one thing. I work in IT and I cannot tell you what Google's current messenger is called. Your grandma wouldn't find it. Zoom was there, had a catchy name and was easy to use. It had/has everything needed to completely dominate.

Was it deeply integrated in the remote learning of those schools? When I looked at it, Google Meet seemed to assume that you are properly signing up an entire organization to Google everything, whereas Zoom is much more "get a few accounts, email invites and get started", which is a lot easier workflow to get running if you suddenly need video conferencing. Even if you are in Google world, just getting a few accounts for teachers might be faster than getting Meet approved and turned on centrally.

Tbh, I still have not ever participated in a Google Meet meeting, so this probably also very much depends on the markets etc.

My employer already had a videoconferencing product offering, which was not very well liked by users, and had been evaluating Zoom for some time as the epidemic really hit.

The result was an accelerated product roll-out; necessity being the mother of invention etc.

Now, I don't know for a fact that other firms were in a similar position but it seems at least as likely as the conspiracy theory version of the story.

>For example, why did schools adopt Zoom instead of Google Meet when Google was already deeply integrated to remote learning?

Because Google Meet is crap, you can't depend on Google keeping a product long-run, and Zoom already had integrations with tons of other apps and hardware (including Slack).

>I am very curious how Zoom took off out of nowhere at the very beginning of the pandemic.

Because it was already the best and up-coming tele-conference tool before 2020?

>I believe I generally keep tabs on up and coming technology companies and never heard of Zoom until mid March.*

Apparently not that good tabs...

"Eric Yuan, a former Cisco engineer and executive, founded Zoom in 2011, and launched its software in 2013."

"In January 2017, the company raised US$100 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital at a US$1 billion valuation making it a "unicorn" company."

"The company first became profitable in 2019, and completed an initial public offering that year."

"On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading.[43][7] The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading.[7] Prior to the IPO, Dropbox invested $5 million in Zoom."

It's because it happened to be an easy to remember brand that is now associated with the product.

Other examples are calling a tissue a Kleenex, calling a vacuum a Hoover, calling a cola a Coke, and so on.

Many mainstream people call a video conference a Zoom and it happened to stick.

Zoom really gained traction during 2019 which is when my massive org adopted it to replace Skype which was being EOL'd by M$. The pandemic took it into the stratosphere.

I believe:

1) pandemic immediately put people online for jobs/schools, requiring collaboration

2) zoom is easy to use

3) zoom was sketchy with privacy/security and that got a lot of media attention (because it became critical infrastructure for jobs/schools/etc)

Maybe you're being downvoted because many of us knew about Zoom for at least a year prior, and individual obliviousness is not interesting.

That and the conspiratorial tone, probably.

> Hmmm...guess CCP got to keep Zoom alive.

Fair enough but I only added that as an edit after my post was downvoted within seconds. In addition, Zoom was a niche company prior to the pandemic. I’d compare it to something like Nuance.

What video conferencing product was not niche prior? I guess WebEx, but "everyone" hates them. (Personally, what I had encountered at work pre-covid had been WebEx and Zoom, outside work a bunch of the free WebRTC-based ones which all didn't work all that great)

Yea I was thinking the same thing. Seems like overnight there was a switch from WebEx to Zoom. Also not sure why you’re being downvoted

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