NTD is a part of the media empire of Falun Gong and related exile Chinese alt-right groups in the US.

I would not count them as trustworthy at all.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/18/zoom-he...

> Jin monitored Zoom’s video system for discussions of political and religious topics deemed unacceptable by China’s ruling Communist Party, the complaint states, and he gave government officials the names, email addresses and other sensitive information of users, even those outside China.

Sounds like due process!

Former Zoom executive Jin Xinjiang worked with Chinese authorities to provide data on users outside of China.

It allegedly told Zoom that if it wanted to get back into the Chinese market, it had to monitor user communications, censor unacceptable topics, give data on around 1 million people in the United States, and hand over special access to Zoom's systems.

Zoom got back into China's market in November of last year.

One of it's main strengths probably was how easy it is to use (e.g. plenty of the competitors you can't just sign up for a free account and then invite people without an account) while working very well (which many of the WebRTC-based competitors in the "easy and free to use" category struggle(d) with). And then it quickly becomes self-reinforcing: if people get introduced to it they'll use it too unless they have a good reason to seek something else, which gave it a boost once video conferencing suddenly was something many people needed. (by now Microsoft Teams has anecdotally taken over lots of the corporate use, tech-y communities have gotten around to bring their own jitsi and BBB instances up, ...)

Tbh, I still have not ever participated in a Google Meet meeting, so this probably also very much depends on the markets etc.

The result was an accelerated product roll-out; necessity being the mother of invention etc.

Now, I don't know for a fact that other firms were in a similar position but it seems at least as likely as the conspiracy theory version of the story.

Because Google Meet is crap, you can't depend on Google keeping a product long-run, and Zoom already had integrations with tons of other apps and hardware (including Slack).

Because it was already the best and up-coming tele-conference tool before 2020?

>I believe I generally keep tabs on up and coming technology companies and never heard of Zoom until mid March.*

Apparently not that good tabs...

"Eric Yuan, a former Cisco engineer and executive, founded Zoom in 2011, and launched its software in 2013."

"In January 2017, the company raised US$100 million in Series D funding from Sequoia Capital at a US$1 billion valuation making it a "unicorn" company."

"The company first became profitable in 2019, and completed an initial public offering that year."

"On April 18, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. After pricing at US$36 per share, the share price increased over 72% on the first day of trading.[43][7] The company was valued at US$16 billion by the end of its first day of trading.[7] Prior to the IPO, Dropbox invested $5 million in Zoom."

Other examples are calling a tissue a Kleenex, calling a vacuum a Hoover, calling a cola a Coke, and so on.

Many mainstream people call a video conference a Zoom and it happened to stick.

1) pandemic immediately put people online for jobs/schools, requiring collaboration

2) zoom is easy to use

3) zoom was sketchy with privacy/security and that got a lot of media attention (because it became critical infrastructure for jobs/schools/etc)

That and the conspiratorial tone, probably.

> Hmmm...guess CCP got to keep Zoom alive.

If it was up to me, it would be blacklisted in app stores, antiviruses (incl. windows' own), malicious website lists and data protection regulations.

Instead, individuals, companies and government offices are literally using it.