As of April 29, Google Meet is now free, which is seemingly direct competition to Zoom, especially with the emphasis on security.

https://blog.google/products/meet/bringing-google-meet-to-mo...

Opinion my own not Google's.

Google Meet is "free" for 60 minutes, which conveniently enough won't be enforced until September.

That's just a shady deal, especially if they end up trying to retire Hangouts chat and so normal users can no longer use free video / voice call services that they've come to rely on having for like 10+ years now.

Don't get me wrong - I love Meet on my business accounts and along with all the other Apps in G Suite, it is well worth paying for. But I also value the fact that normal ass standard Google users have been able to have access to a semi-decent video and voice conferencing platform for over a decade now. I hope that doesn't change come September.

Even for free I won't use it. I already have solutions that I (and the business I work for) have been using for several months. (Personal: Skype or Zoom; Business: MS Teams) Those solutions work. Not only do I not assume that the Google solution won't be half-assed, I also do not assume that it will remain free, nor even remain in their product line for any reasonable length of time for that matter. In fact, being "free" makes even more leery that Google will axe it down the road.

Regardless, if I (and I assume many beside myself) need a video conferencing solution, I would have found one by now and no longer need a "me, too" product.

First, Google Meet is also not e2e encrypted. Second, Google Meet is not now free. They're rolling it out over several weeks. My account isn't activated yet. Is yours?

Google is really, really late to game here. What was Google doing for the last 2 months while Zoom capitalized on our situation?

Walmart doesn't host in AWS for exactly this reason. Amazon is famous for stealing whatever data they can get to promote their own business over their customers.

Some might consider Zoom giving Google, Amazon, or Microsoft insights into their business as the crazy decision.

The comparison is misplaced. Google is not in Zoom business. Google barely happens to have a third grade product for video call, sold as part of their business tools package. The Google product has been shut down and renamed like 5 times since it was created and people don't even take it seriously.

Amazon and Walmart are selling the exact same products, they're competing head to head for every sale trying to get the customer to not shop on the other.

They recently reported 100 million daily active users and growing by 3 million a day.

I think people are taking it seriously.

Are we giving FB a pass for stealing competitor ideas? IG stories (from Snap), FB Room - Zoom Clone, etc.

In my view, those are not the same. If you have a product that I like and then I subsequently copy it then that's one thing. You store your data with me and then I use your data to give my product a competitive advantage over yours is completely different.

How so? Different in what sense?

Ideas are not protected under law. There's no "stealing" of ideas.

You can steal data, code, and customer lists.

> Walmart doesn't host in AWS for exactly this reason.

This isn't strictly the case. They do push some of their data to other SaaS providers hosted on AWS.