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Zoom outage caused by accidental 'shutting down' of the zoom.us domain

(status.zoom.us)
634 points RVRX | 4 comments | 17 Apr 25 00:55 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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Animats ◴[17 Apr 25 03:05 UTC] No.43712702[source]▶
That seriously devalues MarkMonitor's services. MarkMonitor claims to be a "an ICANN-accredited registrar and recognized industry leader since 1999". The whole point of paying for MarkMonitor is that they're an expensive service for valuable domains and are not allowed to screw up. GoDaddy should not be involved here at all.
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electroly ◴[17 Apr 25 04:21 UTC] No.43713101[source]▶
GoDaddy Registry operates the .us registry. You cannot have a .us domain without their involvement. Consider whether you wanted a .com domain instead (which is operated by Verisign).
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throw_a_grenade ◴[17 Apr 25 07:13 UTC] No.43713949[source]▶
zoom.com is an audio equipment manufacturer, which was there before zoom.us.

I guess that's what happens where they had to accept substandard domain, because they were unwilling to be creative about their name.

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rhubarbtree ◴[17 Apr 25 07:28 UTC] No.43714008[source]▶
Incidentally, Zoom seems a terrible name for a video conferencing app - anyone know why they chose it?
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1. eesmith ◴[17 Apr 25 07:58 UTC] No.43714184[source]▶
The Wikipedia editors know, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Communications#Early_year... :

> In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City.

It cites https://vator.tv/2020-03-26-when-zoom-was-young-the-early-ye... where Jim Scheinman says:

> “I loved this fun little book as much as my kids, and hoped to use the name someday for the perfect company that embodied the same values of creativity, exploration, happiness, and trust. And the name works perfectly with a product that connects us visually to one another and that always works so fast and seamlessly.“

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2. sidewndr46 ◴[17 Apr 25 13:25 UTC] No.43716476[source]▶
The reference to "Zoom City" is from an article published in 2020. It seems like a remarkably fitting ret-conning of what is probably a very boring branding decision.
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3. eesmith ◴[17 Apr 25 13:46 UTC] No.43716778[source]▶
What would be the point of ret-conning some other decision?
4. JadeNB ◴[17 Apr 25 19:17 UTC] No.43721005[source]▶
> In May 2012, the company changed its name to Zoom, influenced by Thacher Hurd's children's book Zoom City.

To save people the agony of visiting Wikipedia for themselves to check, changed from Saasbee. Which, good call.