With my own team, it won with one very important feature: the audio processing was better, which meant we didn't have to worry as much about muting or wearing headphones.

We wanted to use slack, but on linux you can't share a single window, and with three screens, that's out. Up until recently we couldn't use them for more than one person, anyway. Google meet was OK, but _required_ headphones. I ended up buying a nice expensive pair of headphones specifically because we were using google meet / hangouts / whatever. Otherwise, it was echoes all around.

With zoom, these things went away. It wasn't 100%, but it was damn near close for us. And this was with a technically savvy team in a software company. When it came to chatting with less savvy friends and family, it was an obvious choice for the same reasons.

No matter the tool, we need to "Setup the webex"... :O

Edit because I googled it for more examples and couldn't help myself: Tupperware, Band-Aids, Post-It, Slip n Slide, Xerox, Velcro, Weed Eater, Scotch Tape, Q-Tips, Rollerblades, Jacuzzi, Bubble Wrap.....

A reverse example of something I use generically but has confused a number of people I talk to in the states is using "Hoover" to mean "vacuum cleaner". They're just called hoovers because the Hoover company made them at one point.

I'm very impressed that they've pulled through. If anything, Zoom has improved during the transition. That's not to say that I find it to be the best solution - I've had several videoconferencing/telepresence solutions work well for me in the past - but it's certainly "good enough" and they're in an enviable market position at this point.

In a few months, I'd love to see some retrospectives come out about how they did it from both the engineering and management perspectives.