Google bans Zoom from employees' computers • Hacker News Board

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#151

Post by tazjin » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #134

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.

I gave up on Google Meet/Hangouts/Whatever. When chatting with Googlers, it is really nice. But their products available to me as a non-Google employee suck and change quite a bit. Just trying to debut issues with participants was frustrating it it would vary based on how they clicked the link, what they had running, etc. I wish Google would just provide the internal tool and sell that. It’s the opposite of dogfoodin…

Google Meet is the tool we use internally. It's available as part of GSuite.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#152

Post by randunel » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:17 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

I'm baffled by the amount of people claiming zoom to be painless or working, even. Don't you know any linux users? Zoom is utterly broken beyond comprehension on any variant or flavour, even when `sudo`ing everything: installer, running, audio setup (pavucontrol) to try to figure out why it refuses to work, etc

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#153

Post by eagsalazar2 » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #120

lanevorockz wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the thing that all Zoom keys are kept and maintained in China. I wonder if this is not the main concern.

got a source for that claim? I work in IT and we use zoom and I have never read that in any article. not that we save anything from zoom that I need to be concerned about key storage for, but concerning nonetheless.

There have been many articles about their bad and suspicious security practices and abuse of user trust.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#154

Post by Zenst » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #130

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 opera…

Ah the days of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_NetMeeting I recall them so well. Desktop videoconferencing and whiteboard interaction was all about to go mainstream back then by many a manager evangelistic eye just far enough of the base of reality that it was almost believable. Yet still such things have to find a champion that rings true for all, let alone interoperability. Which is a shame as many standards out there matured over time.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#155

Post by redmorphium » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

bvandewalle wrote: post #131

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.

We use Google Meet and it struggles to keep up with meetings with more than 10 people. It seems that the common hack is to ask each attendee to disable their camera. On the plus side, it is the only one that reliably works from a browser only.

I think this is a case where the Hangouts brand is tainting the premium GSuite brand, again.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#156

Post by ColanR » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #130

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 opera…

> Because it has a better UI or makes their life very slightly more convenient in some way.

I think you've missed the point completely. It's not a question of convenient UI. It's the reliability of the video call. I've tried numerous video conferencing tools, and the differentiating factor is literally just whether or not the video quality is consistently good, whether the call is dropped or not, and whether the audio is audible.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#157

Post by CameronNemo » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #103

QUFB wrote: post #83

Some thoughts: 1. Google's threat model may not be your threat model, and it definitely isn't the threat model of my daughter's school. A corporation like Google may be concerned using native applications, written in unsafe languages, written by developers from other corporations in China. That said, Zoom isn't wrong for everyone. 2. Google is motivated to push their own solution for obvious reasons. 3. Tavis, or oth…

> Google's threat model may not be your threat model, and it definitely isn't the threat model of my daughter's school. A corporation like Google may be concerned using native applications, written in unsafe languages, written by developers from other corporations in China. That said, Zoom isn't wrong for everyone. Google's threat model surely differs in some way from a school, but the specific threats you named seem…

No they are not. A business can have trade information they want to protect. A school would be more focused on individual privacy and safety. These threat models are quite different.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#158

Post by freehunter » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #72

softwaredoug wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No idea what kind of unreliable networks people get to use, but WebEx has been quite good during the last 10 years.

Yep I’ve been working nearly 100% remote for five years and have several WebEx conferences every day and Zoom doesn’t perform any better or more reliably than WebEx.

Teams is awful. Skype is worse. WebEx is just fine. So is Zoom.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#159

Post by gwd » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

regnerba wrote: post #123

gnicholas wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 1…

I've got probably about a half dozen data points with each, and they seem about the same to me -- my laptop (2018 Macbook Pro) heated up about the same for the 12-node Zoom conference as the 12-node Jitsi conference (neither so badly that it affected the rest of the system or made me worry about anything); people seem to have about the same rate of technical issues / bandwidth issues.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#160

Post by penagwin » Wed, Apr 08, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #130

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 opera…

On the other hand Microsoft Office is still used today - and is still the #1 office suite, especially with Excel. They've since cleaned up most of their security issues (I'm sure some exist, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be).

The problem with Office and Zoom is that they are _the best_ at what they do right now. And that has a massive impact on what people are willing to give up to use it (money, privacy, risk, etc).