Zoom: The Google Response Includes Me Too and a Multi Warhead Strategy
May 12, 2020
Zoom became an overnight sensation. Now Google and Microsoft are waking up to the buzz the company is generating. Where there is buzz, there is money to be made.
Google is notable for having numerous products and services. It has a reputation of abandoning projects when Googlers lose their enthusiasm for a product or service that will not advance their career.
“Google Meet vs Google Hangouts vs Google Duo: What’s the Difference?” asks a good question. The article does make clear that Google offers three services. Presumably Zoom will find itself surrounded and either sell out or just be squashed by the increased competitive pressure.
According to the Verge (a publication which combines wit with Harvard Business Review advice), “Google unifies all of its messaging and communication apps into a single team.” The new Zoom killing initiative will be guided by Javier Soltero, the person who developed the mobile email app Acompli. Soltero worked at Microsoft and is credited as making Outlook what it is today. (What happened to Messrs. Bhatia and Smith, the creators of Hotmail who had some influence on the fine Outlook system?)
From our redoubt in rural Kentucky, does Google need three services to deal with Zoom? Zoom is not a newcomer. The company was set up in 2011. In that period of time, Google had its own array of video meeting services, chat apps, and messaging services. Frankly, I cannot differentiate among Google’s offerings. Maybe sometime in the future enlightenment will arrive.
In terms of financial commitments, will Google consolidate its messaging products and services in order to reduce costs? Will Google innovate so that children of Google engineers will abandon their use of Zoom? Will Google gain organic traction in the video meeting space? Will Google stick with video meetings or abandon them as it did the Toronto smart city play? Will a user know to use Chrome to make group calls in Google Duo? (Even the question can make one’s head spin.)
These are questions which are difficult to answer. Google’s sudden focus on video meetings supports three observations:
- Google failed to develop a video meeting service with the organic popularity of Zoom
- Google’s response is a classic knee jerk reaction
- Google needed to hire a person to try and bring order to the Google entropy generating approach to product and service innovation.
Should Zoom be worried? Yes.
Will Microsoft step up its efforts to deal with Zoom and put speed bumps in front of Google’s information highway? Will Amazon become more active in video services?
Yes.
What’s this mean for Zoom? DarkCyber thinks that life for Zoom will become more challenging.
What’s this mean for Google? Whatever the company does, the actions may fan the flames of regulatory probes into the company’s practices.
Microsoft will thrash, and probably execute another Skype play? Skype, you remember, the dropped ball.
And Amazon? The Bezos bulldozer will grind into the space crushing those not agile enough to climb aboard or avoid getting mashed into the dirt.
And Zoom? I will think fondly of the company, its inept customer support, its icon litter, and its zero privacy approach to video services.
Google’s and Microsoft’s approach to innovation and competition are at least semi-amusing. Zoom, however, may not get much of a chuckle out of the stepped up competitive pressure.
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2020
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