Zoom is so popular in Silicon Valley, even a Google executive's child reportedly prefers it over Google's software
Reuters/Nathan Frandino
Videoconferencing software Zoom has become so popular, even the children of executives at its biggest rivals are fans.
According to a report from The New York Times, the son of Google's chief business officer interrupted a recent company meeting over Google Meet, Google's videoconferencing software, to say how much he and his friends like Zoom.
Zoom has skyrocketed in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic — as of April 21, it had 300 million daily active users.
Rivals like Google Meet have added new features to compete with the service. Google said earlier this month that Meet is adding 2 million new users per day.
Zoom has been beating out videoconferencing rivals Google and Microsoft in recent months — so much so that even a Google executive's child appears to prefer Zoom.
According to a new report on Zoom's rivals by The New York Times' Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel, during a Google staff meeting last month using Meet, Google's videoconferencing software, an employee brought up Zoom's dominance over Meet to Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer.
As Schindler was attempting to soothe the employee's concerns, his young son came into the room, asking if he was using Zoom and saying how much he and his friends love the software, The Times reported.
A spokesperson for Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Zoom has become the software of choice as the coronavirus outbreak has pushed people indoors, resulting in a spike in videoconferencing for everything from remote work to socializing. As of April 21, Zoom's daily users were up 50% from the beginning of April — Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said during a webinar that the company currently has 300 million daily active users.
At the same time, Zoom has faced numerous privacy snafus, including everything from trolls invading conference calls to share racist epithets or porn. The company also shared analytics data with third parties without alerting users.
In the meantime, Google has been adding new features to Meet, like noise-cancellation and the ability to see everyone on a call in a grid view, which is a well-loved Zoom feature. Google is also making the service easier for people to use, rebranding it from "Google Hangouts Meet" to simply "Google Meet" and opening up the software's paid premium features to all users until September.
Google also said earlier this month that it's adding 2 million new users per day.
Read The New York Times' report on Zoom's rivals here.
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