Zoom, software for video communication over the Internet. The program, developed and sold by the American corporation Zoom Video Communications, Inc., is one of the most popular services of its kind.
Zoom is distributed with a “freemium” license, meaning that its use is limited without a paid subscription; videoconferences are allowed for up to 40 minutes and up to 100 participants without payment. The software’s features include screen sharing, recording, and automatic transcription. The program works on both mobile and desktop devices and is compatible with every major operating system.
Zoom Meetings was created under the direction of Eric Yuan, a Chinese American engineer and executive. While a vice president at Webex by Cisco, Yuan proposed modernizing the company’s videoconferencing software. When his idea was rejected by his superiors, Yuan left, taking with him 40 other engineers to start a new business, Saasbee, in 2011. The new company operated on an initial investment of $3 million by friends and venture capital firms. In 2012 Saasbee changed its name to Zoom Video Communications, Inc. The company launched a beta version of its new service in August 2012 and the official product in January 2013.
Despite many competitors and no marketing team, the software’s user base quickly expanded. A few months after its debut, Zoom had more than a million users and had facilitated 400,000 meetings. In its early years Zoom Video Communications enjoyed strong growth. Though at its inception the company had struggled to find financing, due to investor cynicism at the idea of a new company competing with much larger, well-established corporations such as Microsoft and Google, in 2017 the company was considered a “tech unicorn” and was valued at $1 billion. When it became a publicly traded company in April 2019, that valuation increased to $9.2 billion.
In early 2020 the global coronavirus pandemic resulted in many businesses’ employees working from home. Zoom gained the most from this transition. Use of the application at work introduced it to new customers, who began to use it socially as well. Zoom consequently became one of the most downloaded applications worldwide and a household word. In December 2019 Zoom reported that its service was used roughly 10 million times a day. By December 2020 it could claim 350 million daily users. Zoom’s revenues rose proportionately, from $331 million in 2019 to $623 million in 2020. As the pandemic continued into 2021 and 2022, the company’s revenues rose to more than $4 billion in 2022.
With an increased profile came increased scrutiny. As Zoom’s number of users climbed, the company received criticism for security and privacy issues. Some of these flaws incurred real consequences for Zoom and its users. For example, hackers successfully crashed Zoom meetings often enough that the prank developed its own slang term, zoombombing. The abusive messages and imagery suffered by customers resulted in a class action lawsuit, which Zoom settled in 2022 for $85 million. In addition, some schools, government agencies, and corporations banned the service’s use. Zoom responded by adding new security and privacy measures to its platform, including end-to-end encryption and a button for reporting poor behaviour.