Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act

One major problem for Zoom is that it cannot merely focus on its core video conferencing competency while achieving the growth objectives of a publicly traded company. A high-quality video conferencing platform is hard to replicate until it isn't. The amount of talent and energy being spent right now on video conferencing, as a result of remote work, is going to amount to commoditization of high-quality video conferencing. Zoom has maybe another 12 months of juice left. As a result, it's advancing into new categories and will compete with customers very soon.

I'd be very cautious about sharing information with Zoom. You may be showing it where to fish.

So, you think it'll turn into a generalized software consulting company??

No. I think it will be a services provider operating within a "remote economy".

How hard can it possibly be to replicate? Zoom walked into a market packed with established players and now they own the whole thing. That suggests the barriers to entry aren't so great.

I think the "high-quality video conferencing" is the "hard to replicate" portion. I've used a lot of different conferencing platform and consistently zoom has been: Relatively easy to use, high quality, reliable.

Those last two portions are super critical. No one wants to spend the first 10 minutes of their meeting fighting with their conferencing technology. Also no one wants to sound like robots.

With COVID19 and a ton more people working remote, will there be more competition coming into the space? Sure. But it will take them a lot of work, I'd think, to at least meet Zoom's quality and reliability... and do it either so much better or for so much cheaper to warrant change.

In 12 months, it won't matter if there are 10 other products offering a comparable service. Companies won't want to pay the cost of switching for something that's "just as good". It has to be 10x better to justify the switch. Consumers won't switch because everyone else will have Zoom. A videoconferencing app is only useful if both parties have it installed.

Own the whole thing? While I used zoom at my last job, I don't at my current one.

What does zoom do that something like Google Hangouts or Slack doesn't?

In my experience it has better reliability and quality, to the point where I haven't had to worry about it.

One of the things that are special about the video conferencing is how easy it is to switch compared to many other industries. You wont need a factor ten here.

Concur. Past employer switched out Zoom for other tech. The demand to switch conferencing provider was easy. The other tech was painful to use and much-complained about until everyone was told to shut up about it. So, "videoconferencing that doesn't suck" is still the barrier to entry.