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Zoom Acquires Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#351

Post by erydo »

Congrats to the team. Though in the inevitable acquisition, I wish GitHub/Microsoft had been the acquirer: there are a lot of natural fits between that ecosystem and Keybase's model, and a reasonable history of successful acquisition.

Hopefully Zoom avoids gutting Keybase. I found it really useful for bootstrapping credentials when onboarding remote team members and contractors. Way easier to manage than GPG: it was fairly painless even for non-technical people.

Fingers crossed. I wonder what the infrastructure overhead cost is?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#352

Post by djrogers »

purple-dragon wrote: post #318
ViViDboarder wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they hired Alex Stamos and probably just spent a bunch of money on buying Keybase seem like a sign that things are changing. They prioritized ease of use above all to get adoption before. This is appalling to me, but I believe they are seeing enough pressure to change course. It’s believable to me that they would intend to as they have already captured much of the consumer (non-B2B) market mind share an…

> The fact that they hired Alex Stamos and ... Call my cynical, but "hiring" a bunch of infosec celebrities and critics as part-time consultants or contractors should be considered nothing but a (brilliant and silencing) PR move until the day that product updates and analyses reveal otherwise.

> until the day that product updates and analyses reveal otherwise.

The product (and their poor installer practice) has been updated several times in the past few months alone, and each move has made Zoom a more secure product, with the vast majority of the hubbub having been addressed. So are you simply ignoring that, or are you setting your own personal goalposts?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#353

Post by up2isomorphism »

Unregulated capital dominance is current at the historical peak in US. And funny thing is people can not do anything about it. Considering the time where AT&T (which is much more benevolent in today's term) can be broken up, today is just money game and money game.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#354

Post by centimeter »

willis936 wrote: post #208
centimeter wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a rose-tinted view of what old-timey businesses looked like. We moved past mom-and-pop subsistence industry like 400 years ago. No one ever said “I’m going to create a sheet metal production company for the common good.”

Could you point to examples that support the existence of this alternate history of which I've never heard of?

To be clear, you are asking for examples of historical companies that were profit motivated?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#355

Post by gonehome »

zelly wrote: post #325
pornel wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keybase was dead as soon as they took VC money. Their original purpose — tying identities to keys — could have been a nice small non-profit. But there aren't fortunes to be made from managing GPG keys, so they had to pivot into shark jumping.

https://pgp.mit.edu/

Linking to this is evidence that you don't understand the entire value of Keybase.

PGP sucks.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#356

Post by herval »

bloopernova wrote: post #222
roblabla wrote: post #34

Keybase' post about the acquisition: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-joins-zoom > What the Keybase team will be doing > Initially, our single top priority is helping to make Zoom even more secure. There are no specific plans for the Keybase app yet. Ultimately Keybase's future is in Zoom's hands, and we'll see where that takes us. Of course, if anything changes about Keybase’s availability, our users will get plenty…

> So, yup, keybase is dead. Well, shit. Keybase had an amazing potential. I use it every day to ad-hoc securely share/store stuff. It will be sad to see it wither even more than it has. :(

While it's a cool tool, what exactly was the (commercial) potential Keybase had? I could never tell.

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#357

Post by schoolornot »

Surprised they took the path of acquiring Keybase and hiring Alex Stamos (ex FB CISO) vs. hiring Moxie Marlinspike and other respectable professionals. Keybase's reputation has become eroded with their recent crypto currency signing nonsense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moxie_Marlinspike

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#358

Post by bgee »

gonehome wrote: post #349

For years people have been begging Keybase to allow them to pay them for the service and Chris Coyne always refused. Now they've lost their independence and they're owned by a communication company that has [edit: the majority of] its dev team in China. I use Keybase to talk to my friend in China since it's one of the few services they don't block. This is a pretty disappointing outcome.

> communication company that has its entire dev team in China

citation needed

Also, what are you trying to imply by this assertion?

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#359

Post by fredfjohnsen »

f38zf5vdt wrote: post #88
dcow wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t necessarily read it that way. Keybase is 100% functional and has worked well for a long time. Zoom needs people who know how to make modern client software and chat if they want to compete with the Slacks and Teams, etc. You can’t even screen share on wayland... it’s that bad. If keybase ultimately gets secure video, and zoom a security architecture overhaul, how is that a bad thing?

If Keybase acquired Zoom (haha), then, sure. This is a PR move for a public company. They'll probably gut Keybase, move their Chinese server generated AES128 keys to AES256 keys generated by you and uploaded to their Chinese server, then call it a day. I can't think of a single instance where acquisition of a smaller company like this resulted in an improved version of the original product. How many of us are running…

I can. https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-connect/ https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-protect/

Re: Zoom Acquires Keybase

#360

Post by gallamine »

herval wrote: post #356
bloopernova wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, yup, keybase is dead. Well, shit. Keybase had an amazing potential. I use it every day to ad-hoc securely share/store stuff. It will be sad to see it wither even more than it has. :(

While it's a cool tool, what exactly was the (commercial) potential Keybase had? I could never tell.

Secure filesharing and chat, for starters. Secure digital wallets tied to identity. It was a wallet platform I'd actually be interested in.
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