As an engineer, I do not understand this. Google has unlimited software talent, compute and money. Any ideas why they haven't been able to catchup to Zoom?
Incentives!<p>- Zoom is a company that sells it's conferencing software directly, and it's the core of what they do and sell, if it's bad people don't buy it and they go bankrupt.<p>- Google does whatever they want since most of their money comes from ads. You don't buy Meet from them directly, it's just a small unit in a sea of thousands other things they do. If it's bad and people don't use it, or they get bored of it, they'll just throw it in the graveyard[0] and carry on...<p>Basically it does not matter how much talent and manpower you have, all that matters is the business model.<p>[0]<a href="https://killedbygoogle.com/" rel="nofollow">https://killedbygoogle.com/</a>
I feel Google is a lot like me. I start side projects for the sake of learning, but I rarely finish them because, for me, finishing isn't the goal.
Zoom is an entity built almost exclusively on this product. Their culture is geared for this piece of software.<p>Google may have many clever engineers but lack focus in many products which feels half-baked.<p>E.g. their podcast app, music app, weather app, fit app. All feel kind of half compared to many of the dedicated alternatives.