
Google bans Zoom from employees' computers - Lagogarda
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/google-bans-zoom
======
QUFB
Some thoughts:

1\. Google's threat model may not be your threat model, and it definitely
isn't the threat model of my daughter's school. A corporation like Google may
be concerned using native applications, written in unsafe languages, written
by developers from other corporations in China. That said, Zoom isn't wrong
for everyone.

2\. Google is motivated to push their own solution for obvious reasons.

3\. Tavis, or others, at Project Zero might know some things, maybe we'll find
out.

~~~
jMyles
> Google's threat model may not be your threat model, and it definitely isn't
> the threat model of my daughter's school. A corporation like Google may be
> concerned using native applications, written in unsafe languages, written by
> developers from other corporations in China. That said, Zoom isn't wrong for
> everyone.

Google's threat model surely differs in some way from a school, but the
specific threats you named seem like threats equally applicable to the
surfaces identifiable in the threat model of a school.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
The threat model for a school is kids/others disrupting sessions and creepers
using access to gawp at (or communicate with kids). Since the Chinese
government is unlikely to feel the need to compel Zoom to do that, the fact
that they have all the keys centrally stored is not a problem.

Google's threat model actually does include state level attack (And
specifically by China) to steal IP or access confidential user data.

~~~
HashThis
I great worry that China's intelligence service has the zoom traffic of
American's routed to the Chinese zoom servers, so they can intercept.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Yes, but why does it matter if China intercepts your American school children?
Why would they want to? That's not a reasonable threat model.

~~~
rangibaby
It still leaks information. How many kids you have, their name, some things
about their personality, who they are friends with, etc. Think about how
someone who wants to hurt or control you could could use that information.

~~~
magduf
You seriously think the Chinese government is going to stoop to K&R with
random Americans?

The Chinese government is the last entity I'd be worried about with this kind
of information (unless, of course, you live in China). Certain criminals in
your own country are a much bigger concern.

~~~
hnick
Doubtful. But "the Chinese government" is comprised of individuals who might
want to make a quick buck selling information on various markets. Perhaps to
those certain criminals better positioned to take advantage of it.

This is similar to the concern some of us had over giving local government
departments access to our full Opal card public transport travel histories
here in Australia. Not all government employees are up to no good, but some
are. Don't give them more than they need.

------
neil_s
(disclaimer: I work at El Goog)

A number of companies have rightfully banned Zoom's native apps, given how
insecure they are. I had previously uninstalled it when the news about the
secret web server they install came out. Google is still allowing use of the
web app, but the web app bizarrely doesn't support Grid/Gallery View, which is
the main reason my friends/family wanted to use it.

Hangouts Meet was optimized for work meetings where most people would be
dialing in from high-bandwidth meeting rooms, not everyone individually
dialing in from home, but hopefully now they've heard the loud feedback about
the especial usefulness of Gallery View during quarantine times and will
introduce the feature soon.

For now I'm using the Chrome extension that enables this feature client-side
using JS/CSS, and staying tf away from Zoom. With how little I used Zoom
before quarantine, I don't understand the adoration for it (I found its UI
confusing and quality similar to other tools), and I haven't been able to find
any benchmarks comparing its video quality for people on less good internet
connections (my home network is pretty strong).

~~~
jacobsenscott
We switched from google hangouts to zoom a while ago because the quality
"felt" better. We are a small distributed team where our internet connections
run the range of fast to slow. We didn't track numbers or anything, but fewer
dropouts, frozen videos, better sound quality, etc. Maybe we all just had
better internet days each time we used zoom though. Never know.

The UI is initially confusing, but so is the UI for every video chat app I've
used. It seems to be the fad to have "clever" UI in video chats apps (controls
that auto-hide, non-standard icons, low contrast, non standard control
placement (use the standard toolbar luke!) etc.

On top of that zoom has always "just worked". The "just worked" thing is now
resulting in security woes, but still. Start a meeting, send link. Done.
Online works, dial in works.

Contrast with hangouts (dropped non-chrome browser support for at least a
year). To this day we have users that can't use slack video for unknown
reasons (app store slack doesn't work as well as slack installer slack or
something). WebEx is some horror show that seems to constantly re-install
itself for each meeting. You're lucky if you can get it going before the
meeting is over.

Where most apps stop at video chat and maybe poor quality screen sharing, zoom
has a pretty deep enterprise feature set. Good webinar support, integration
with SIP systems, SSO, recording etc.

~~~
kyrra
When you say hangouts, do you mean old hangouts or the newer Hangouts Meet?
They are 2 very different products.

~~~
mbo
It is, as of today, just Google Meet, no "Hangouts".

~~~
jeffhou
I thought so as well, but apparently it's called Google Hangouts Meet.
[https://gsuite.google.com/products/meet/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/meet/)

(disclaimer - I work at Google, but not on teams that build video chat
software)

~~~
mbo
Disclaimer: also work at Google

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21214059/google-
hangouts-m...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/8/21214059/google-hangouts-
meet-rebrand-video-chat-conferencing) you would be incorrect

------
jefftk
"Employees who have been using Zoom to stay in touch with family and friends
can continue to do so through a web browser or via mobile."

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

~~~
unihb
Yeah this should be higher. Also work @ G, and it's just the desktop version
of the app that's been disallowed. We can still run the Zoom web app on corp
machines.

~~~
klenwell
One thing that puts me off about Zoom is the way it tries to push you into
downloading the desktop app when the web app should be fine and is what I
prefer.

It uses shitty dark patterns that require two or three clicks and at one
point, if I'm not mistaken, waiting for a link to appear after a delay.

In my most recent experience with it, it led to a zip file being automatically
downloaded to my computer. This when I already have had plenty of previous
experience with the web app and was deliberately trying to reach to the web
page for a meeting for which I had been sent a URL.

Slack does similar things but isn't quite so aggressive about it.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> One thing that puts me off about Zoom is the way it tries to push you into
> downloading the desktop app when the web app should be fine and is what I
> prefer.

I'm pretty sure they do that because their web app is garbage, and they know
people will get a much better experience in the native app.

Notably, Zoom's native app is truly native; it's not some electron wrapper
like Slack or Teams. I don't think it's a coincidence that Zoom is both (A)
the only major solution that seem to work consistently with large numbers of
participants, and (B) the only one not using WebRTC.

~~~
shbooms
> and they know people will get a much better experience in the native app.

not if I'm a user who is actively trying to not install the native app. for
me, and likely many others, security and privacy trump performance benchmarks
and UI/UX all day, every day.

~~~
sgift
And in that case you can use the web app. The grandparent talked about a "dark
pattern" and it's really hard to see one if the native client is better than
the web version.

------
psanford
Zoom has a not very well published chrome app (intended for chromebook users).
You can install it in normal chrome and it gives you a much better experience
than the web version without all the issues of the desktop app.

I trust zoom a lot more when it is running inside a chrome sandbox than as a
native app.

~~~
eagsalazar2
I use this because I have a pixelbook and it works pretty well except for two
issues: (1) minor issue that you have to click the "leave meeting" button, you
can't just close the window or else it strangely relaunches and (2) major
issue is that you can't change your video background which is a killer feature
IMO.

~~~
snazz
I haven't been able to find a way to change my video background on the Linux
client either. The image recognition software must be difficult to reliably
implement for their lower-value platforms (as in, it would cost them too much
to get it working well relative to the number of users).

~~~
ereyes01
Works for me on Linux, after signing in (I'm using a paid plan).

------
crazygringo
I mean, Google bans MS Office from employees' computers as well (with special-
case exceptions), so they use Docs instead. Since Google has Meet (Hangouts),
this isn't really surprising.

It mainly sucks for when an employee (especially in sales) has a call with a
client that uses Zoom and can't use Meet, because then you're forced to dial
in, which just puts you at a disadvantage when everyone can see everyone's
face except yours.

Edit: per comments, people can still use the browser version of Zoom, so
doesn't seem that bad.

~~~
enneff
MS Office isn't "banned" from employees' computers at Google. If you need it
(and some do) you must request it specifically, because it costs Google a
nontrivial amount of money for every user. Same thing with any piece of
commercial software: for example, I have Adobe Photoshop on my Google laptop,
and I had to request it because it costs Google a few hundred bucks, and most
people don't need it at all.

Before Google Docs existed, many employees used MS Office, and when Docs was
being rolled out Googlers were incentivized to switch to Docs by being offered
kudos, swag, etc (ie, the carrot, not the stick).

~~~
jiggawatts
> because it costs Google a nontrivial amount of money for every user.

Google is the fourth biggest public company in the world as measured by market
cap.

A Microsoft 365 "E3" license is $20/user/month. They can afford it.

This restriction is entirely about eating your own dogfood.

~~~
enneff
Yes, we can afford it, and that's why if you want MS Office you click a button
on a web page and get it immediately. But why would we throw away money by
having it installed by default?

~~~
soup10
Can you guys stop astroturfing here. Nobody is dumb enough to believe that
Google is saving money by not using office.

~~~
arcticfox
> Nobody is dumb enough to believe that Google is saving money by not using
> office.

Maybe I'm dumb, why wouldn't they be saving money by not paying for Office?
Obviously they could buy it for every employee, including the majority that
don't need it, but why? They could also just light money on fire (but why?)?

~~~
soup10
Office is business productivity software. You don't buy it for every employee,
you negotiate a license for the number of seats in use. It has way more
features than google docs and is standard everywhere. It's like saying you
could save money by having programmers write code on pencil and paper. You
saved the money on the computer but you have a net loss because you lost the
power and efficiency of real time editing, compiling and debugging. These
corporate guys just drink the internal koolaid/spin from hr or whatever and
come here repeating nonsense as if its fact and it annoys me. It's dogfooding
with some minor privacy/security concerns since microsoft is competitor, we
get it, just call it what it is and move on.

~~~
briandear
> It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere

I work for another FAANG and we don’t use MS Word. It certainly isn’t
“standard” for us. It’s not standard for two of the three FAANG companies, so
“everywhere” is inaccurate. Being popular isn’t the same thing as standard.
Pages is a far more usable for the vast majority of use cases. Most people
aren’t creating extremely complicated word processing documents in their day-
to-day. Word is a bloated mess. Keynote is far easier and more elegant than
PowerPoint. Excel however certainly shines for big spreadsheet work, but for
most spreadsheet work Numbers and the google spreadsheet are perfectly fine.

~~~
soup10
This isn't about the merits of excel over sheets, it's about employees coming
on the board and lying to promote their company. Google makes 1.61 million in
revenue per employee. Honestly it's only going to get worse, because if you
see the videos of the company meetings, Sundar was always the super loyalist
that would say anything to protect Google or run interference for senior
leadership. And now that he's CEO they will start aping him.

~~~
joshuamorton
Your reasoning is based on the belief that Google is sacrificing productivity
by not giving all employees office. GP is directly contradicting that line of
thought, which makes the rest of it fall apart.

~~~
soup10
there is two narratives, which do you think is more likely:

1\. Google is dogfooding it's own products to improve them and make them
competitive and stop potential data/privacy/security leaks by using external
software.

2\. Google is trying to save 20 bucks

There is nothing wrong with Google docs or sheets and I have used them both.
But sooner or later you make enough documents or work with enough spreadsheets
you're going to want or need some feature that office has.

~~~
enneff
Why should it be an either/or thing? Both are valid reasons for Google to
prefer its employees use Docs. However the fact that you _can_ choose to use
MS Office without any special permissions somewhat undermines your reasoning
in point 1.

Google may be a rich company but it's also a very frugal company in many ways,
particularly wrt technology (they pioneered the "huge amounts of redundant
cheap hardware" approach to DC construction, for example). When Googlers were
being coaxed into switching to Docs from MS Office, the financial benefits
were front and centre to that pitch.

------
softwaredoug
God please don't make me use a non-zoom video conferencing tool!

I have used about a dozen over the years in my role as a consultant, and Zoom
has been by far the most reliable. I’m hopeful lots of good can come from the
scrutiny, but please Zoom get your act together so I don’t have to use some
other buggy thing that doesn’t actually work.

~~~
softwaredoug
I knew I would get downvoted. But folks seriously don’t remember the pain
before Zoom. And the current pain anytime we have to use a GoToMeeting, Google
Meet, Webex or other tool that barely functions.

Human interaction that actually works right now is so important. And I simply
have a hard time trusting another product to actually do the call reliably

~~~
tazjin
Google Meet is the only one of these that has always worked reliably for me.
Doesn't require any strange clients, works in most browsers, never randomly
fails to move just some person's audio and so on.

Disclaimer: I work for Alphabet, but already held this opinion before I did.

~~~
rad_gruchalski
> worked reliably for me

Every second time I’m using it, I either don’t hear the other people, or
people do not hear me. YMMV.

~~~
tazjin
If you have these issues, especially so frequently, I'd wager it's a problem
on your end.

~~~
bvandewalle
Almost all problems on video conferences are on the user's end. What Zoom
excel at is to mitigate most of those user issues by trying to figure out all
the corner cases that the user might be in.

------
blntechie
Same in my org. Employees cannot setup Zoom meetings but can join meetings set
by others from outside the org but only via browser. Zoom apps are banned and
all installed apps in managed devices will be removed by IT.

------
benatkin
I hope that Zoom will make it easier to use their web client because of this.

~~~
nimish
This is lifechanging, the zoom native app is a security nightmare and the web
experience is deliberately crap.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
This might explain why the people around me don't understand why it's so
popular. None of us is reckless enough to install their application, so all
we've seen is the web version.

------
arrty88
Zoom's issues are fixable... unlike a hardware defect like the macbook pro
keyboard and the iphone antenna that didn't work well... Zoom is clearly
better than the alternatives and has my 80 year old uncle talking about it.
This too shall pass.

~~~
gwd
I uninstalled zoom and refused to use it after they did that skanky "start up
a local webserver to avoid Safari's user-safety questions". Then everyone was
using Zoom, so I gave them another chance and installed the native client.
Turns out the native client install also contains skanky hacks to avoid user-
safety questions. So I uninstalled it again, and now my company has told us
all not to use the native app.

Once may have been an honest mistake. Twice (and now more) is definitely a
culture problem that's not going to be fixed without massive turnover.

------
jmcnulty
Zoom have responded very quickly to the complaints levelled against them.
Their problems are more PR than techinical now.

~~~
TwoBit
Yeah, but allowing China access to meetings seems so bone-headed that I
question what other problems may be lurking.

------
mfer
You can make joining via the web an option. No app install required. Details
at [https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-
us/articles/115005666383-Show-...](https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-
us/articles/115005666383-Show-a-Join-from-your-browser-Link)

Note, works best in Chrome (likely Chromium) based on what the docs say.

------
skc
Must be nice to be an upstart. You have a throng of tech savvy people to
defend you at best and forgive you at worst.

If this was a Microsoft/Google product it would be pilloried to death.

------
monkeydust
I work at a large corp, our own in house video conf went down for a few hours.
Our backup conference system also tied to same system of course went down.
Rather than postpone meetings we took them on zoom. It just works and I hope
they get over this security issue and start ramping up their feature set.

------
BooneJS
Is it not common for companies to control what apps are installed on corporate
computers, and where company data is stored (cloud providers, etc)? I get the
whole Zoom backlash, but this is taking a specific instance of company and app
and harvesting clicks.

------
mikekij
I'm seeing references to Zoom "getting over these security issues". Some of
the issues (e.g. not requiring passwords) can be relatively easily addressed.
Others, like transmitting symmetric encryption keys over the wire and storing
them in databases in China, are more fundamental to Zoom's corporate strategy.
I doubt Zoom would change the most jarring of their security gaffes in a way
that would satisfy security-focused companies like Google.

~~~
chelovek89
It seems to me Zoom follows the "dont ask for permission, ask for forgiveness
later" model. You don't accidentally send data to China. Zero excuse.

~~~
mikekij
Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I totally agree.

------
hyko
It doesn’t matter what your personal threat model is: these videoconferencing
apps have become de facto critical infrastructure for many countries almost
overnight with no scrutiny and a joke security posture, because the IRL
channels they replace are unavailable. This has dire implications for all of
us, both in terms of espionage and the potential for massive disruption.

Threat modelling is fine for your home security, but it is now dangerously
anachronistic when evaluating anything connected to the internet. One solution
would be to at least educate people about the need for a security mindset on a
massive scale, or at worst craft some laws to force it.

I’m sure there are many people who would accept the risks of drink driving: we
don’t let them.

------
andreygrehov
How do people feel about BlueJeans?

~~~
bobongo
They are banned at my work. We are told to wear trousers.

~~~
downerending
[https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-10-08](https://dilbert.com/strip/1996-10-08)

------
geggam
I would assume Zoom is banned at many corporate offices. I can name two not
published

------
mancerayder
I just wish Slack didn't use so much firepower on my machine, it seems to make
my Macbook pro 2015's fan go wild and the CPU to spike, and it seems to "rot"
over time, and get worse.

------
codazoda
I put together instructions for creating an install-free dock icon for Zoom.
Nothing ground breaking here, I just combined several sets of instructions I
found useful.

[https://blog.joeldare.com/creating-an-install-free-dock-
icon...](https://blog.joeldare.com/creating-an-install-free-dock-icon-for-
zoom-on-mac/)

Zoom stopped the browser login from working for a few days, but it seems to be
back working now.

------
jariel
A more existential question is why the ____Google and MSFT with 'All the
King's Horses and All the King's Men' can't make a _basic, reliable, video
conf_.

I understand there are some business reasons here and there (MS wants people
on Teams not Skype) but it doesn't matter.

'Basic Video' should be as common, robust and reliable as making a phone call.

~~~
tytso
All of our meetings at Google are using GVC (aka Google Meet from gSuites),
and while there are people who have reported problems (mostly in low bandwidth
situations and/or using Firefox), my experience is that it is quite reliable.
I've had video conferences from my Dad's Senior Center (obviously, pre-
COVID-19) using a MiFi box, and there things were more reliable if I turned
off my camera, but other than that, I've personally never had any problems
using Google Meet from either a Linux box running ChromeOS, or a Chromebook.
In fact, I've never had to worry about attending meetings remotely so much
that I really can't speak to the reports of people complaining about Google
Meet being unreliable.

------
baby
Spoiler alert: Google has paid for a third party assessment of zoom, the
pentest came back with catastrophic results

~~~
tilolebo
Source? The article doesn't mention that.

------
nitrobeast
I believe Google also bans non-Google file sharing tools like Dropbox or
OneDrive from employee’s computers too.

------
eagsalazar2
Can someone with more experience using Jitsi comment on benefits/limitations
for use at work? We typically have 2-5 people on calls but occasionally up to
20. I tried it a bit with 1-1 calls and it was pretty great but I'm assuming
there are some limitations vs Zoom to be aware of.

~~~
gwd
At work, our team of 4 has been using it for several weeks too, and it's been
just fine.

Our church group has been using it with 12-ish participants once a week for
several weeks now. There are individuals who consistently have problems, but
since it's always the same people, I tend to think they'd have similar issues
with Zoom. (Zoom meetings with different sets of people have had similar sorts
of issues.)

People are saying that Firefox "technically works" but that due to limitations
in the spec, one person in your conference using FF causes everyone else's cpu
to go through the roof. (Can't speak authoritatively on that, but FF is
labeled as not fully supported.)

Fundamentally, I think it probably comes down to the business model. The
company that runs meet.jit.si, 8x8, doesn't make money on that service; they
make money selling some large integrated business solution. Running the free
service seems to be less of a loss leader than a massive pool of beta testers.
So they aren't pushing it as hard as Zoom, where (at least originally) the
free version was limited to 40 minutes to directly up-sell you to the paid
version.

Two other things about Zoom:

1\. Easy to get the client installed, and once it's installed, it's easy to
use. Of course, they consistently do that by working around the protections
your OS has in place by dodgy methods.

2\. It seems to work well in China. Not sure how Jitsi fares in that respect.

EDIT: Some cool things about Jitsi:

1\. NO INSTALL AT ALL for desktops. People just click the link and bam, you're
in a meeting.

2\. Rooms are created when a URL is visited. So if you want so split into two
groups, half of you can just add "2" to the URL, and bam -- group is split in
two. Ready to join back together? Delete the '2' and you're back together
again.

Anyway, all that to say -- I think Jitsi is definitely worth a try. Tell
people to use something Chromium-based until they've fixed the issue with FF
(I use Brave) and give it a shot.

------
sgt
I prefer Zoom primarily because of two things:

1\. We used google meet a lot, but it's very CPU intense and also does not run
in Safari so I have to start Chrome to run it 2\. It's a better UI and Video
Conf experience, hands down.

I realize that it has issues but nothing truly major as far as I can see.

------
mark_l_watson
A question: I have avoided installing the native macOS Zoom client, but I use
the iOS native app on my iPhone. Does the iOS app have the same
vulnerabilities as the macOS native app? I searched in these comments for
‘iOS’ to see if someone already discussed this. Thanks.

------
chvid
Is there any technical merit to this ban? Why would forcing use of web version
mitigate any concerns? (The concerns I have heard are lack of proper end-to-
end encryption, servers in China and the possibility to join chatrooms by
guessing a name (zoom-bombing)).

~~~
mulmen
Seems perfectly sensible to ban all software that is not pre-approved by IT,
InfoSec and Legal.

You can't safely assume all your employees are properly assessing the risks
unless that is their actual job. If you only allow what you know then you can
reason about your risk.

~~~
closeparen
Google’s reputation as an employer stems in large part from rejecting that
belief, and more generally the enterprise bureaucratic culture it lives in.

Engineers aren’t clamoring to get into the kinds of companies where IT needs
to pre-approve software for their workstations.

~~~
thelean12
You might be disappointed to know that native applications need pre-approval
in most cases. There's a whitelist.

Of course, after years and years and hundreds of thousands of engineers, the
whitelist is pretty robust.

I don't know for sure, but I bet Zoom has been on that whitelist, and
"banning" is removing it from that whitelist.

~~~
closeparen
I'll be absolutely stunned if people are really having to raise JIRA tickets
instead of typing "brew install" but my information is secondhand so what do I
know.

Our laptops are configuration managed, force upgraded, and surveilled, but we
all have root and IT has never stood in the way of "power user" behavior. The
extent of the frustration in engineering is that their management processes
sometimes eat CPU. My understanding is that most of the Valley is like this.

~~~
tbodt
[https://github.com/google/santa](https://github.com/google/santa) is used to
whitelist binaries on Macs, but you can fill out a form to instantly opt out.
One of the options for why is "I use a package manager".

------
patricklovesoj
this is more incentive bias playing out. taking the opportunity to push google
hangouts.

------
jasonv
If the tech community can't prioritize security over features, it's pretty
rich for same community to declare that the "average joe" doesn't care about
security.

~~~
walrus01
The same "tech community" that's been drinking the "move fast and break
things" and "be disruptive in your market segment" koolaid for 15-20 years?
Unsurprised.

~~~
jasonv
I was a bit unclear in my original post. I meant this tech community here..
lots of "don't make me use something else" posts in a community of people who
ostensibly are tech oriented.

But your point stands either way. I'm just surprised at the pass being given
to Zoom given the blitheness of their gaffes.

------
codesternews
Why Zoom is making so many silly mistakes. They should take advantage of this
situation instead they are blowing up. Every time they apologies or make
statement trust has been lost.

------
zwaps
Other large technology companies that manufacture stuff but are not Chinese
have made the same decision.

I write like this because I am not sure what I can disclose.

------
ngcc_hk
Ban is not long term. You need a better solution. Not sure it is from google.
But not from china or associated with china is important.

------
zozbot234
What's surprising to me is that it _was_ allowed before. They have had their
own videochat solution for years, so I would expect the usual "eat your own
dogfood" approach.

~~~
jedberg
What do you use when Hangouts is down to discuss fixing Hangouts? :)

~~~
basch
Duo [https://duo.google.com/about/](https://duo.google.com/about/)

~~~
brian_herman__
What do you use when duo/hangouts/meet is down?

~~~
vkou
E-mail.

------
coleifer
I don't like zoom either, but what exactly made them the HN punching bag of
the month? Ad/surveillance giants like Google or FB are typically spoken of
with notes of reverence and awe on here. Zoom gets lit-up for sending data to
FB, but FB gets a pass? I don't know I just can't get into the mood.
_extinguishes torch in moat_.

~~~
gipp
> Ad/surveillance giants like Google or FB are typically spoken of with notes
> of reverence and awe on here.

Uh. Are we reading different websites? This is the most vocally anti-
everything-FAANG community I've seen on the Internet, since about 2017 or so.
Except Apple, mostly.

~~~
jakear
Netflix also seems to be acceptable.

~~~
gpm
I'll just chime in that Apple and Netflix the FAANG companies I dislike the
most, for balance ;)

------
vondur
It makes sense. Doesn’t hangouts work for this purpose?

------
DeathArrow
Google banning competition? Totally unexpected.

------
epa
Hangouts is not that bad

~~~
franze
Yeah, it's working, sometimes for most of the participants. Than turns your
computer into a toaster before it clogs it completely.

~~~
lindgrenj6
Agreed. This is my biggest complaint with it, the functionality is amazing but
if you're on any sort of laptop the poor thing will melt halfway through a
meeting.

------
ronreiter
Smells like banning due to Google competing directly with Zoom.

------
willart4food
LOL, of course!

------
jbverschoor
Chrome has similar installers etc

------
dqpb
That’s pretty embarrassing for google if their own employees prefer zoom over
google hangouts.

~~~
codemac
It's more the following workflow:

\- your friends set up a zoom happy hour \- current personal laptop is fubar
or super old/unsupported \- you use work laptop, installing zoom

As someone not in sales, I have never seen anyone try to use Zoom for actual
work meetings.

------
hacker_newz
I interviewed at Google a while back for an SRE position working with the
Hangouts team. My first interview was in another office and the audio in
Hangouts session would not start. We ending up having to move on to the next
interview. I'm not surprised even Google employees don't use it.

~~~
cameronbrown
> I'm not surprised even Google employees don't use it.

I wouldn't go that far - there's something like 250k hangout meetings per day
at Google[0] and that was before Covid.

[0] [https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-
all...](https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/how-google-went-all-video-
meetings-and-you-can-too/) (2017)

~~~
sah2ed
Relevant text from your link:

 _" Nearly a decade has passed since we built the first prototype. Face-to-
face collaboration is ingrained in Google’s DNA now—more than 16,500 meetings
rooms are VC-equipped at Google and our employees join Hangouts 240,000 times
per day!"_

------
antonyh
Google banning it is almost an endorsement for me. Anything the Chocolate
Factory hates can't be all that evil.

Joking asides, this is a weak way to promote the fact they have a competing
tool.

