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Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

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Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#421

Post by neuronic »

annie_chung wrote: post #400
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…

> That said, Zoom isn't wrong for everyone. Why use it at all? I honestly don't know what's available in this space, since I don't need to, but is there really no alternative? If they're building a product that does shady things (e.g., macOS install nonsense) and is full of security holes (e.g., zoombombing) that's enough to tell me I don't want to use it and I don't want my son's school using it. Google isn't alone…

Zoom is by far the best usable conferencing software. Its security flaws are irrelevant to most users as the pain of using anything else is awful. It's always a major drawback.

People in the real world care as much about Jitsi as about Bernie Sanders. HN and Reddit are bubbles that Joe Schmitz from MegaCorp Inc. does not know or care about ever despite some aspects being vastly better on the security side. UI/UX is Zoom's domain though and nothing comes close.

Try doing a Teams call with 30+ people.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#423

Post by silon42 »

SiVal wrote: post #330
HashThis wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I great worry that China's intelligence service has the zoom traffic of American's routed to the Chinese zoom servers, so they can intercept.

The Chinese gov't spying problem isn't with schoolchildren per se but schoolchildren use their parents' computers. Chinese authorities openly demonstrate their intention to deploy the maximum level of surveillance they can over any adult within their reach. This just increases their reach.

Even if they don't use their parents' computers, if Zoom is not totally sandboxed, they can hack the child's OS, they can mess with computers on LAN, or the router/wifi.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#424

Post by JibJabDab »

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

Jitsi hasn't been great for my team. Our company switched to Whereby and it is worlds better than jitsi/zoom and whatever else. Only thing I'm not sure about is sharing on-screen audio.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#425

Post by sgift »

shbooms wrote: post #355
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing that puts me off about Zoom is the way it tries to push you into downloading the desktop app when the web app should be fine and is what I prefer. I'm pretty sure they do that because their web app is garbage, and they know people will get a much better experience in the native app. Notably, Zoom's native app is truly native; it's not some electron wrapper like Slack or Teams. I don't think it's a coincid…

> and they know people will get a much better experience in the native app. not if I'm a user who is actively trying to not install the native app. for me, and likely many others, security and privacy trump performance benchmarks and UI/UX all day, every day.

And in that case you can use the web app. The grandparent talked about a "dark pattern" and it's really hard to see one if the native client is better than the web version.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#426

Post by toss1 »

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…

Sure, everyone's threat model is different.

But look at the whole threat model.

* Google's exposure is far greater than merely other languages

* Exposing profiles & activities of an entire generation of kids to a foreign adversarial surveillance govt is itself a serious threat, covered by other responses here

* This creates a massive increase in exposed surface area. E. g., consider abkid using their parent's computer who happens to work at a sub-sub-contractor on a key defense project. Even if the key files are properly encrypted, just some little data points like the fact of their employment, network name, list of known WiFi routers cached, etc., now lets CCP fill out their model of attack vectors. There's a thousand other ways this can be used to gain an edge if you don't like that example

The bottom line is like the precautionary principle - just because you or I can't figure out how to exploit something, doesn't mean that it can't be exploited.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#427

Post by javier123454321 »

neil_s wrote: post #303

(disclaimer: I work at El Goog) A number of companies have rightfully banned Zoom's native apps, given how insecure they are. I had previously uninstalled it when the news about the secret web server they install came out. Google is still allowing use of the web app, but the web app bizarrely doesn't support Grid/Gallery View, which is the main reason my friends/family wanted to use it. Hangouts Meet was optimized fo…

Zoom tends to just work more reliably than other solutions in my experience.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#428

Post by barbs »

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…

If anyone's using Firefox it'll mess with everyone's performance. They're working on it, should be okay in the next month or so.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#429

Post by prepend »

tazjin wrote: post #151
prepend wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I tried it years ago, the GSuite version could not dial out to an external phone number to join them in. Is this now available to gsuite users?

I tried looking up the features on the Wikipedia page [0] and didn’t see a really comprehensive list. I reviewed Wikipedia because when I searched for google meet, Google’s top result (that seems like their product page) [1] just had an “open” button that linked out to the App Store to install “Hangouts Meet by Google.”

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hangouts [1] https://meet.google.com/

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#430

Post by thomaslord »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #328
klenwell wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that puts me off about Zoom is the way it tries to push you into downloading the desktop app when the web app should be fine and is what I prefer. It uses shitty dark patterns that require two or three clicks and at one point, if I'm not mistaken, waiting for a link to appear after a delay. In my most recent experience with it, it led to a zip file being automatically downloaded to my computer. This when I…

> One thing that puts me off about Zoom is the way it tries to push you into downloading the desktop app when the web app should be fine and is what I prefer. I'm pretty sure they do that because their web app is garbage, and they know people will get a much better experience in the native app. Notably, Zoom's native app is truly native; it's not some electron wrapper like Slack or Teams. I don't think it's a coincid…

This is all well and good when their native app actually works - in my experiences on Ubuntu (using i3, so that could be a factor) it freezes up my laptop completely. I was initially able to get the web version working by using the click-the-meeting-link-multiple-times trick, but now Zoom wants me to make an account to join meetings which I have no interest in doing.

My new strategy is to call in and say "Sorry, I can't see your screen because Zoom doesn't work on my computer," which is a completely unnecessary situation that Zoom creates by intentionally adding roadblocks to their web app.

It's hard to imagine why they'd want to push the desktop app that hard. I don't want to assume anything untoward, but it'd be a lot easier to dismiss the whole sending-data-to-China thing if they didn't try so hard to force you onto the version of their product that's capable of such a thing.

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