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Comment by detaro | Hacker News Reader

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, ...)

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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).

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