Zoom is worth less today than before the pandemic | Hacker News Reader

Zoom is worth less today than before the pandemic

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20 pointsDVassallo12 comments

Zoom definitely have a "moat" even if not one that's necessarily going to last forever, but at least better than no moat at all.

They are built in to some video conferencing solutions in offices. Specifically a place I go has a room where we have to use Zoom to interact with the cameras, microphones and screens of the room - even though we'd otherwise usually use Google Meet which we prefer.

Why do you prefer Google Meet? Browser based is better than fat client?

Browser-based is a plus for sure, as the browser is more sandboxed than the OS. There was the time Zoom left part of itself still installed after the user uninstalled it on Mac, and it listened to a port which could be accessed from the browser [1]. Zoom was the product that made me realise that the "locked down" phone model was the right one after all, after a decade of me complaining about it. We are in an adversarial relationship with software and the companies that produce it.

But Zoom can be used in the browser as well, which is how I use it.

If we're talking to say 10 people, I can't get all the pictures of everyone to appear. Google Meet doesn't do this by default either (I think it shows up to 9 people by default) but you can change it to show more. Maybe you can do the same on Zoom but I haven't found out how.

The "share" button (at least on the web app) is green at the bottom. It looks like it's selected to me, which always makes me panic I'm sharing my screen.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/10/apple-silent-update-zoom-a...

I don't think they're the only ones. AFAIK other vendors have appliances too (and I wonder why you'd buy them ...).

We have Cisco Webex Room Kits. People wanted them in certain conference rooms because they're (to the end user) turnkey systems with good PTZ cameras, mics, and they tie into our room scheduling system so you can see what's coming up in a given room by just looking at the splash screen.

I haven't used one of the Zoom equivalents, but they also have the ability to join Zoom and some other types of calls via SIP and we have macros installed to add Zoom-centric buttons to the control touch panel for people who want to connect to a Zoom meeting.

I wouldn't personally bother with one of these, but I can see why it's easier to install and operate than (for example) a dedicated PC with the hardware needed to tie in a room mic system, cameras, etc. They're also easier to manage centrally.

But the flip side is also fairly obvious - lack of flexibility over time. A dedicated PC can more easily be swapped out than a proprietary box that acts as a VTC codec and will still become outdated in 5 or 6 years.

We also prefer Google Meet, since we're have our meeting rooms equipped with CFMs, but we live in a multilingual country and the interpretation feature from Zoom, where we can hire interpreters and our attendees can listen to the language they prefer is simply non-existent on Google Meet.

Web conferencing and instant messenger applications have a short half life. It seems that they get them working and then quit maintaining them and they fall behind. When's the last time you've heard about

Go2Meeting

WebEx

Adobe Connect

AT&T Connect

Google Meet

Microsoft Live Meeting

Microsoft Teams

Skype

Skype For Business

Zoho

Unless Zoom really breaks with precedent it too will pass.

Well the drop in valuation has more to do with interest rates than with Zoom's underlying business.

Teams is more widely used than Zoom in my view. Significantly more.

Google Meet and Teams are ubiquitous. We only use Zoom for very large meetings with hundreds of people because it supposedly does better with large meetings (don’t know if this still holds).

Hot money in - hot money out

I suspect that discord ate a chunk of their market

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