Wow, I didn't know Zoom stock is now worth only 12% of what it was at its pandemic highs, putting it almost exactly back to how it was right before the pandemic. https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+stock
Google Meet and Microsoft Teams also beefed up their offerings. My current gig is an Office 365 shop (or whatever the brand is) so it's all Microsoft cloud stuff. Meetings including broadcast type things like all-hands are all done via Teams which integrates directly into Outlook and ActiveDirectory. I know Google has equivalent integration with their offerings.
So Zoom in my experience doesn't quite offer anything all that unique to a lot of COVID era adopters. It completely makes sense their usage would drop back to their pre-COVID numbers. Remote work isn't dependent on Zoom nor does it offer the same integration as other platforms.
COVID will be forever with us from now on just like the flu has been since forever and I haven't heard of a currently realistic/feasible way to snuff it out. It will be just one of those infectious diseases everyone gets the yearly shots for.
That the lockdown situation wouldn't last forever however was clear to anyone who hadn't gotten high off the farts of <insert any conspiracy theorist nut's name here>.
In the end society mirrored the body's immune system with their reaction to new viral threats:
- active defense mode: fever (lockdown) and try to sweat most of it out (first vaccines for broad herd immunity), followed by
- continual defense mode: producing and tuning antibodies to ever new mutations to the original viral aggressor (releasing lockdowns step-by-step, yearly boosters, learning to live with the chance of catching another of the myriad of diseases out there).