Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 450 posts

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#431

Post by thomaslord »

soup10 wrote: post #297
enneff wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we can afford it, and that's why if you want MS Office you click a button on a web page and get it immediately. But why would we throw away money by having it installed by default?

Can you guys stop astroturfing here. Nobody is dumb enough to believe that Google is saving money by not using office.

Google is a large company so they have lots of money, yes. Google also has lots of employees, so paying a per-employee price for anything gets expensive. I can't find a Google headcount vs Alphabet, but at the end of 2019 Alphabet had 118,899 employees. $20/month for each of those employees would cost $2,377,980 a month or $28,535,760/year assuming no annual-payment discounts. Google could absolutely absorb that easily if they purchased Office for every employee by default, or if only 25% of the company gets around to requesting it they can save $21 million a year simply by not buying software nobody asked for or intended to use.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#432

Post by lallysingh »

arcticfox wrote: post #302
soup10 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you guys stop astroturfing here. Nobody is dumb enough to believe that Google is saving money by not using office.

> Nobody is dumb enough to believe that Google is saving money by not using office. Maybe I'm dumb, why wouldn't they be saving money by not paying for Office? Obviously they could buy it for every employee, including the majority that don't need it, but why? They could also just light money on fire (but why?)?

They directly build and sell a competitor.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#433

Post by neves »

rand49an wrote: post #420
neves wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My children's school is using Microsoft Teams for classes. The students are: - kicking out their colleagues - muting the teacher - posting memes in the chat room It looks like you can't prevent them from muting/kicking out each other. There's a larger threat surface of mean pre-adolescents, than a hacker trying to steal their info.

All these things can be stopped with the Teams policies which can be set by the Teams owner (probably the teacher). Better education regarding these tools is required for sure.

Sure. And it's not easy for a k12 teacher of a third world country to use these tools. The default is open and the need to configure it is a surface attack.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#434

Post by atombender »

jacobsenscott wrote: post #315
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…

We switched from google hangouts to zoom a while ago because the quality "felt" better. We are a small distributed team where our internet connections run the range of fast to slow. We didn't track numbers or anything, but fewer dropouts, frozen videos, better sound quality, etc. Maybe we all just had better internet days each time we used zoom though. Never know. The UI is initially confusing, but so is the UI for e…

Have you tried GoToMeeting? From the company that makes LastPass.

It's mostly equivalent to Zoom, from my experience. Grid view, screen sharing, recording, chat, file sharing, phone dial-in, calendar meetings, etc. If you follow a GTM invite link it downloads the app and run its for you, so nobody needs to have the app previously installed.

It's also rock stable. I've had hundreds of meetings with GTM, and never had any audio/video issues, whereas Google Hangouts/Meet has always been really flaky.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#435

Post by lima »

floren wrote: post #248
lima wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with it? We're GSuite customers and I spend at least an hour in Meet each day with zero issues :)

The screensharing is truly atrocious. Any window over, say, 1280x720 looks like total garbage on the other end. Aliased to hell, unreadable text, "ghosts" when you scroll.

This is true. We don't use that feature for this reason.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#436

Post by rconti »

tpudlik wrote: post #369
noitsnot wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Google usually dictate which products you can and cannot use in your personal life and free time? Why was this statement needed?

I believe they are talking about using Zoom to call friends/family from your work laptop.

But they also, bizarrely, mention mobile.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#437

Post by mikekij »

chelovek89 wrote: post #268
mikekij wrote: post #236

I'm seeing references to Zoom "getting over these security issues". Some of the issues (e.g. not requiring passwords) can be relatively easily addressed. Others, like transmitting symmetric encryption keys over the wire and storing them in databases in China, are more fundamental to Zoom's corporate strategy. I doubt Zoom would change the most jarring of their security gaffes in a way that would satisfy security-focu…

It seems to me Zoom follows the "dont ask for permission, ask for forgiveness later" model. You don't accidentally send data to China. Zero excuse.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. I totally agree.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#438

Post by bduerst »

rconti wrote: post #436
tpudlik wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they are talking about using Zoom to call friends/family from your work laptop.

But they also, bizarrely, mention mobile.

Google issues pixel work phones to its employees who qualify.

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#439

Post by scroy »

briandear wrote: post #319
soup10 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office is business productivity software. You don't buy it for every employee, you negotiate a license for the number of seats in use. It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere. It's like saying you could save money by having programmers write code on pencil and paper. You saved the money on the computer but you have a net loss because you lost the power and efficiency of real time editing,…

> It has way more features than google docs and is standard everywhere I work for another FAANG and we don’t use MS Word. It certainly isn’t “standard” for us. It’s not standard for two of the three FAANG companies, so “everywhere” is inaccurate. Being popular isn’t the same thing as standard. Pages is a far more usable for the vast majority of use cases. Most people aren’t creating extremely complicated word process…

> two of the three FAANG companies

three?

Re: Google bans Zoom from employees' computers

#440

Post by qiguai »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #196
jMyles wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The threat model for a school is kids/others disrupting sessions and creepers using access to gawp at (or communicate with kids). Since the Chinese government is unlikely to feel the need to compel Zoom to do that, the fact that they have all the keys centrally stored is not a problem. Google's threat model actually does include state level attack (And specifically by China) to steal IP or access confidential user da…

Actually tiktok shows is their intent is kids data so not far-fetched
Post reply on HN