Back in late 2019 I met someone from Zoom who was visiting London. The company, then as now, offered free video-conferencing calls for up to 40 minutes, but charged a fee of around £10 a month to users who wanted longer calls.
Towards the end of the conversation, I flippantly asked what I thought was a hypothetical question: ‘How much would you charge to give full Zoom access to the whole UK population?’ I didn’t think much more about it, but to my surprise they came back to me a few days later: ‘If you know anyone in the government who’d be interested in this, we’d like to talk.’
In the end, I never got round to doing anything, and then the pandemic hit, which solved their adoption problem overnight. Nevertheless it remains an interesting thought experiment. Firstly, why might this have been a good idea? And why did I never bother taking it further?
It’s wonderful we don’t have to pay for email software, but the price is that email technology has barely advanced in 20 years
One reason I was interested was because Zoom was not Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple or Microsoft.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in