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Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

brookings.edu

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Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#101

Post by quanticle »

As others have pointed out, it's laughable to consider Zoom to be critical infrastructure when so many alternatives exist.

Moreover, I find it somewhat strange that he's referring to Zoom as "critical infrastructure" instead of the major cloud providers like AWS or Azure. If Zoom goes down, it's an inconvenience to many. If AWS or Azure goes down, many business just stop functioning. Heck, many government departments might stop functioning, given how government infrastructure has been moving to "the cloud".

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#102

Post by throwawaysea »

I feel like Zoom is the least concern. It is relatively replaceable, unlike providers with significant network effects - payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Stripe), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit), ad networks (Google, Apple, Facebook) or dominant share (Google search).

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#103

Post by notahacker »

reaperducer wrote: post #97
notahacker wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them probably have their IT team's preferred enterprise vendor's teleconferencing system set up as the exclusive videoconferencing tool long before Zoom became flavour of the month... Also, their employees probably have smartphones.

A six-year-old student is not an employee.

A six year old student also isn't someone who's at risk of losing a business deal because they can't get their IT team to let them install one of the client's suggested alternative webconferencing systems to do the demo at a particular point in time.

Of the many potential problems six year olds accessing education primarily through webconferencing may face, I'm not sure inability to choose their own preferred videoconferencing service is high up the list, and I doubt Zoom servers have more outages than their home internet and wifi...

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#104

Post by timvdalen »

Robotbeat wrote: post #92
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With COVID my grandfather has been doing telepresence visits with his doctors, for COVID among other reasons. Mostly they were using a 3rd party solution like webx/zoom/etc but one doctor (automated in an online form) noticed his number was tied to iMessage and offered to just FaceTime him at his appointment time. Super easy for him (at 94) to self-manage vs any other solution where we (my mother or myself) need to b…

It’s a shame there isn’t seamless ability to Facetime with Android users like there is to make a voice call or text with them. We (read: tech community and/or society) should fix this. It’d be in society’s interest if a video call between android and Apple was as easy as a voice call is. (and I do think Facetime between Apple users is this easy... I sometimes use Facetime purely because my WiFi is a little better tha…

Isn't Google's Duo available for iOS?

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#105

Post by hooande »

scottlamb wrote: post #91
impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

This would be a large inconvenience and a disruption, but that doesn't justify one private company being considered critical infrastructure.

This view is generally antithetical to innovation. Even if everyone already knows how to use Microsoft Office, it can and should be replaced if better software comes along.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#106

Post by TeMPOraL »

hirako2000 wrote: post #82
zelphirkalt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what' worse, Zoom or Teams. Seems like "pick your poison". A coworker once looked at Teams console. I had logged over 700 errors. Often we cannot hear people, although their tech is completely fine. It's just Teams being bug ridden and excluding people.

Seamless integration with office360, with that they can afford to have issues.

Not just that - in general, Zoom is just a videochat; Teams is an office productivity tool. It's pretty good at its function (I'm using it at work and I don't really have much to complain about, except the weird handling of code blocks in chat).

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#107

Post by tomxor »

BS, people use what works, it's just video calls.

What I find most bizarre is why zoom is on top, this is probably a lesson in how powerful marketing and timing can be for some types of products... But as a counter example: everyone at my company has ended up using google meets, just because through trial and error it fails the least and is the easiest for everyone to get into.

The last time I tried zoom for an external meeting and it was a nightmare, it felt like I had to jump through 10 hoops just to get into the frickin meeting, and even then 4/5 people couldn't get it to pick up their microphone through the browser API.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#108

Post by dllthomas »

Geezus_42 wrote: post #40
lima wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even WebEx is still around and, ironically, works much better in a browser than Zoom.

New webex sucks for remote support. It forces me to re-request control every time I paste something. Yes I could manually type everything out but that is a pita when dealing with long Linux commands pulled from documentation.

Is it every time you paste something, or every time you leave the program and focus on another to copy something?

If the latter, and you're using X, it should be possible to write a program that takes the selection buffer and provides a different response to each SelectionRequest in turn, letting you walk through a script pasting a command at a time without having to leave the current window. I don't know whether such a thing already exists.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#110

Post by reaperducer »

lima wrote: post #34
quietbritishjim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And unlike many other services, the network effect is quite low because I can easily install multiple video conferencing software or even run some in the browser. If someone organising a meeting asks to use something unusual, I'm normally not that bothered.

Even WebEx is still around and, ironically, works much better in a browser than Zoom.

Even WebEx is still around and, ironically, works much better in a browser than Zoom.

I had a videoconference with some Apple people this month, and they were all on WebEx.

Maybe there's a reason. I couldn't tell you. My company is a hodgepodge of Zoom, Teams, BlueJeans, and who knows what else.

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