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Zoom has been under the scanner for security concerns for months now but its rising popularity has pushed other video conferencing platforms including Google to improve their product. Google’s video conference platform is now called Google Meet which has also received some good amount of traction amid the lockdown. Google has been working tirelessly to deliver a seamless user experience. With that in mind, Google recently announced that everyone will be able to use Google Meet for free until September 30.
Although Google Meet and Zoom are competitors now, a report coming from The Information states that Zoom was once so popular inside Google that the Cloud engineers considered acquiring it. That was in the year of 2018.
The report notes that “several thousand” Google employees were using Zoom at the time, instead of Google’s own Hangouts Meet, which is now known as Google Meet. According to the publication, discussions of acquisition went as far as evaluating the price and calculating the cost of running Zoom on Google’s servers.
Zoom was “one of several” companies that Google Cloud engineers evaluated in this way, the report states. A Google Cloud spokesperson reveals to the publication that Google “never seriously evaluated acquiring Zoom”.
Also read | How to participate in “Innovative” challenge to build India’s Zoom rival
Amid the COVID-19 lockdown, people are relying a lot on video conferencing platforms and that proved to be a boon for Zoom. However, since the platform faced a flurry of privacy and security issues, the Indian government cautioned against using Zoom and established that the app will not be used by the government officials. The government also announced an “Innovative Challenge for Development of Video Conferencing Solution” to build India’s Zoom rival.
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Google is also highlighting the security features of its Google Meet to showcase its product as a competitor to Zoom. Last month, Google banned the Zoom app from its employees’ laptops citing “security vulnerabilities” as the reason and lit a fire under Google to improve its own video chat product Google Meet.
