Google Engineers Flirted With a Zoom Acquisition—Before a Push to Beat It

Not long ago, Google and Zoom Video Communications had cordial relations. In 2018, several thousand Google employees were using Zoom as an alternative to Google’s own videoconferencing product, said a person with direct knowledge of the situation. The popularity of Zoom within Google even prompted some Google Cloud engineers to discuss acquiring Zoom late that year. 

They went so far as to evaluate what would be a reasonable price to pay and calculated the unit economics for the service if it ran on Google’s servers, according to a person who has worked at Google Cloud. Zoom was one of several companies the Google engineers evaluated in this way, said the former Google Cloud employee. The internal discussions didn’t get very far.