Sure, even if it doesn't look like so, I'm happy that Zoom exists. I use it every day without thinking about it at all. This is how technology should work. It should be transparent. Moreover, I myself converted at least 7 companies to use it instead of other solutions.
> Do you have any thoughts on why/how Zoom appears to have much higher quality than say Skype/Google Hangouts without the need for additional equipment?
Zoom founders are former Cisco guys. They took let's say 70% of what's the best Cisco has developed in terms of know how and started selling it for pennies. So, they have a lot of experience with that kind of tech. That results in: a great noise cancellation by default, extra good algorithms for balancing sound levels between participant (that might be even the most unique on the market), an algorithm that can focus on (also audio) for a currently speaking person - working VERY fast. It also seems that they leverage a big cloud provider for low latency between ALL continents (tested, 4 way connection between the US, Asia, Europe and Iceland - works probably better than anything their competition can offer). One must remember, though, that the initial cost of development of all of that, plus the cloud costs (it must be a lot, this is why they forbidden 1080p and HD voice) must have been very large when they had started. The only other company I've seen doing that in the last couple of years was Star Leaf (they were like a father to Zoom), and they are... I'm not sure if they're out of the market or in just a bad financial shape. Financially it's a high-level game. No wonder there's not that much actual competition. Only on the first glance all those products look similar, but Zoom is like what Skype was for regular people 10 years ago, although for enterprise. Microsoft is entirely different beast, and Google is just a joke for hipsters.
Skype belongs to Microsoft, and they went the UC way (like unified comms market does it always) - I mean that they assume you're going to make your config tailored up to your situation; which comes down to dedicated rooms, DSP processors, etc. Zoom went with completely different approach - everything is configured with some assumptions in mind. They are like Apple. They want you not to see all the files on your HD by default. No wonder it works wonder for a lot of people. Especially those non-technical ones! It just works at least reasonably well.
It's hard to argue with the fact that Zoom has nailed it from the very start. They made a bet and now they can enjoy the results. Being former Cisco guys, I'd just expect them to strive for quality too, but that's not going to happen. It's crystal clear now - even providing advanced encryption is now a big deal. They are going to be like Apple. That has both pros and cons. Up to everyone to decide for oneself, exactly as it should be.
Yet, I'd like to point to the fact, that the paramount value in videoconferencing since always was immersion. Now the market decided it wants more of the cheap+fast+I-don't-wan't -to-thing-about-it stuff. I want videocalls to be like in SF novels! I want it commonly used and 4k with ultra-HD voice, with multi-directional audio coming from like 7 different directions. I want immersion. I must be biased though, because I work remotely and I prefer it over other options ;) Howk!