Facebook and Google are coming for Zoom

CNN Business — If there’s one company the pandemic has turned into a household name, it’s Zoom. It’s early to be getting comparable numbers for Facebook ’s Messenger Rooms, but the company said in its announcement that between WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, 700 million accounts already participate in video calls each day. Shutterstock “It’s more likely that Facebook will be successful than Google,” said Laura Martin, an industry analyst at Needham & Co, “based on Google’s track record of late entries into other companies’ businesses, where its results have been anemic.” Zoom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Facebook’s and Google’s offerings. “Unlike a social network, a user doesn’t need to spend time replicating their hundreds of friend connections each time they join a new video call service,” said Charlotte Slaiman, a competition expert at the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. “As a result, consumers may be more willing to ‘multi-home,’ or use multiple services, on video calls.” Geoffrey Manne, a competition expert at the International Center for Law and Economics, said the video conferencing market could easily be defined by several strong players rather than a single, dominant company capitalizing on winner-take-all effects.