Google bans Zoom from employees' computers • Hacker News Board

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#121

Post by bvandewalle » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #100

softwaredoug wrote: post #30

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.

It's fascinating to see people's experiences. I've been using WebEx in enterprise/corporate environment for couple of years intensively, and it "just works". I can download desktop client, but I can also just run it on browser. Zoom always wants to install weird clients that violate policies and cause my corporate laptops to refuse or bork. I recognize my experience may be a minority one, but I'm surprised, genuinely…

The issue is that WebEx might just work for you, but if there is one person for whom it doesn't work then that is the limiting factor.

What people struggle to understand is that Zoom made it easy accross ALL operating systems. While Webex might "just work" on a subset of Windows and Mac hosts.

I use Linux as my day to day OS and WebEx is a nightmare (which sticks well to the stereotypical enterprise tool from Cisco).

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#122

Post by hckr_news » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #100

softwaredoug wrote: post #30

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.

It's fascinating to see people's experiences. I've been using WebEx in enterprise/corporate environment for couple of years intensively, and it "just works". I can download desktop client, but I can also just run it on browser. Zoom always wants to install weird clients that violate policies and cause my corporate laptops to refuse or bork. I recognize my experience may be a minority one, but I'm surprised, genuinely…

I had to use Cisco Jabber at my last role and it really made no sense to me that you couldn’t save messages.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#123

Post by regnerba » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #79

elcomet wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jitsi is the worst in my experience, particularly with many people (ie more than two or three).

I was planning to try it out. Can you explain what hasn't worked well for you?

Not the person you asked, but I personally really dislike Jitsi for the following reasons:

* We run into so many issues screen sharing, usually it's just that the persons screen doesn't show up, but it's also often way to compressed to read

* Even just 1 on 1 it makes my laptop cry, with 5 or 6 people in a conference I have to minimize the application or I cannot use my laptop at all because of the CPU load, and at 12+ people even with the application minimized it was maxing out my 2017 Macbook Pro CPU

* For comparison, I recently was in a 230 person Zoom conference, laptop hardly noticed

* I often have audio issues and it requires restarting the application or chrome before it fixes itself

* Really the performance of it is the biggest reason I hate it, we tried having a "lounge" where people join it and just chill while working, but we stopped because once a few of us got on it our computers just became unusable

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#124

Post by hckr_news » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #44

softwaredoug wrote: post #30

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.

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

Jitsi is quite good.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#125

Post by bvandewalle » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

satya71 wrote: post #110

tazjin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's missing too many features to be usable. No remote control. The speaker detection is terrible. Audio quality is bad. We only use it because we are cheap and it comes free.

Note that "Google Meet" (part of Enterprise suite) is different than the free "Google Hangout".

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#126

Post by pinewurst » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #101

tazjin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Same here - often it'll tell me I'm waiting for other people to show up but the other people will never see I'm there. It works somewhat better with Chrome but I loathe having that installed on my Mac. Rarely I do have to do so, but am forced to spend time removing its tendrils afterward (it's not just deleting the app!).

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#127

Post by marrone12 » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

satya71 wrote: post #110

tazjin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's missing too many features to be usable. No remote control. The speaker detection is terrible. Audio quality is bad. We only use it because we are cheap and it comes free.

Hangouts is different than Google Meet, their premium product. But my big problem with them is that when screensharing you cannot see anyone's faces.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#128

Post by rad_gruchalski » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

tazjin wrote: post #105

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Yeah, probably. But what should I do about it. It’s unusable for me. Doesn’t work with Chrome, doesn’t work with Firefox. Zoom works for me every single time.

Edit: Maybe if I could receive some support from Google to find out what my problem is, I’d be able to fix it. But that ain’t going to happen.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#129

Post by Medicalidiot » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

monkeywork wrote: post #53

softwaredoug wrote: post #30

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.

Use Jitsi

I really need to try this one out. I keep hearing it one here, but everyone I know uses Zoom.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#130

Post by walrus01 » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #30

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.

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

I have honestly lost track of the amount of software I've seen in the past 20 years, that people insist they absolutely must continue to use despite its well documented gaping security flaws. Because it has a better UI or makes their life very slightly more convenient in some way.

Versions of Microsoft Office from the early 2000s where an entire operating system could be pwned simply by opening an excel or word file with malicious vbscript in it were good examples. JPG parsing buffer overflows. People continued to not only not patch it, but use it in its out of the box configuration.

For reference, organizations that have now banned Zoom include google, NYC public schools, SpaceX and NASA.