Google started developing it more for enterprise use in 2017 but Hangouts has been around since 2013.
Maybe it was the friction around plugin deprecation (was it Firefox?) combined with the treadmill of deprecations and transitions to new products; within the past year or two I've had to jump between Safari, Firefox, and Chrome to join a meeting--also requiring a separate plugin install. Over many previous years Zoom worked just fine as a standalone app.
I also think accounts are a friction. Even though we all used Google services, with Zoom if I needed to hop onto my phone so I could listen in while running an errand I would have needed to authenticate if I was using Meet. I also don't think I've ever been in a Google video chat with more than 2 people. With Zoom we did company meetings without issue.