WEBVTT - Zoom, The Accidental Pandemic Social Network 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.840 Why settled for seven percent returns from your four oh 0:00:02.840 --> 0:00:05.560 one K. Whether you're an experienced investor or new to 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:07.920 the game, the Motley Fool wants to help you find 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:10.800 great stocks. That's why they've created a report on a 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:13.960 group of five stock picks for the next generation of investors, 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:16.840 and it's free for all listeners at full dot com 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:20.200 slash the number five stocks. Hi. I'm Carol Masser and 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:22.480 I'm Jason Kelly. The cover story for this week's issue 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:25.239 of Bloomberg Business Week is about Zoom, a company that 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:28.680 brought simplicity to video conferencing and then it became the 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.960 Pandemics social network. Well, Carol, it's so fascinating because before 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.520 the coronavirus, this was a company that had just gone 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:39.520 public with a business model catering really to businesses. Now 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:43.240 it's become critical infrastructure for millions of the rest of 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.800 us as we connect with our friends, family, colleagues, classmates, 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:51.200 and customers during this unprecedented moment. That's so true, Jason, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.600 And if you haven't tried Zoom, I gotta say you 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:56.360 may just be one of the few out there, because 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.920 just about everybody is talking about it and they have 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:01.960 used it A part of the charm Jason is really 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.440 how easy it is to use it, and it has 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.040 some fun features, like the ability to change your backdrop 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:09.480 to say, a tropical beach. I gotta say I played 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.200 with that. I know that that checks out? Do we 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:14.760 mention how many people are now using Zoom. Instead of 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.759 the ten million daily users that Zoom was seeing in December, 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.600 now wait for it, two hundred million users are using 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.679 the service every day. The CEO, eric Uan, told the 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.160 magazine that even he's in too many Zooms, he has 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.800 indeed well. The company's share price has obviously surged this year, 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.720 but because it's popularity has spread at the speed of 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.600 the pandemic, Zoom has also had an equally fast zoom lash. Yep, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.800 you heard it right, zoom lash over things like privacy 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.440 mishandling of user data and also a few other concerns. 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.280 It's a must read story. Here's Drake Bennett and Nico 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:54.840 Grant story. It's called the Accidental Social Network. Eric Uan 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:58.480 built Zoom into a tech unicorn in the unflashy business 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:03.400 of enterprise communication, then suddenly the world needed it to 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:08.600 be something else. By Drake Bennett and Nico Grant like 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:11.400 the rest of us. Eric Uan is taking things day 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.920 by day right now, the founder and chief executive officer 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:18.960 of teleconferencing software company Zoom, gets up each morning after 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:22.240 three or four hours sleep and nervously checks the previous 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.559 day's capacity numbers to make sure the servers aren't overwhelmed 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.000 by traffic. Then he begins the long slog of video 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.519 conference calls from his Bay Area home. It's too many 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:37.840 Zoom meetings, he says via Zoom. I hate that. Along 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:40.079 with the crush of new users and the challenge of 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.280 running a business during a pandemic, there's the deluge of 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:46.200 negative news stories, the letter from the New York State 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:50.040 Attorney General and the complaint from Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:54.160 all accusing Zoom of mishandling or abusing user data while 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:57.320 allowing hackers to run him up. It's not helping that 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:01.360 with school and college canceled, you three kids are at 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.480 home clogging up the WiFi. The other night he got 0:03:04.520 --> 0:03:06.600 an email from a mother about a troll who used 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:12.160 Zoom to invade her kids virtual classroom and show inappropriate content. Afterward, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.840 he couldn't fall asleep. The only thing keeping you on, 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:18.760 saying is his mom, who's been living with the family. 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:21.239 Each day for lunch, she brings him a noodle or 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.000 rice dish she's made upbraiding him when he forgets to 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.280 eat it, And if Juan has time after dinner, mother 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.160 and son take a walk in his backyard. I tell 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:33.600 myself every morning when I wake up two things, Yuan says, 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.120 don't let the world down. Don't let our users down. 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.040 A month ago, his company was merely a fast growing 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:46.440 success story in the somewhat boring universe of enterprise communications. Today, 0:03:46.480 --> 0:03:50.960 suddenly Zoom is critical infrastructure. As billions of people around 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.160 the world socially distanced. To blunt the toll of the coronavirus, 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:56.880 those lucky enough to still have jobs are trying to 0:03:56.920 --> 0:03:59.840 work them from home. To do so, they're turning to 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.760 remote collaboration tools. Messaging platforms such as Slack and video 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:09.640 conferencing software like Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and especially Zoom 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:13.400 have seen explosions in traffic. Every day is a record, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:18.000 Yuan says. Zoom's daily users ten million in December now 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:22.200 number two hundred million. The company's share prices climbed seventy 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.920 in the same period, doubling from early February to late 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.080 March before dropping off even as markets and the global 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.400 economy have been pummeled. Zoom's new traffic isn't just from 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.919 workplace conference calls. It's simple interface users enter a meeting 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.560 with one click has made it perfect for millions of 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.119 people who want to maintain at least a diluted form 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:48.040 of human contact. Schools and colleges are teaching classes on Zoom. 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:51.559 Alcoholics anonymous groups are using it to hold meetings. People 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:54.400 are going to Zoom family reunions and happy hours and 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:59.040 trivia nights. They're dating, talking to therapists, and having birthdays 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.960 in photos his sister posted on Twitter. Hunter Lee, a 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.560 Walmart food sales associate in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, celebrated turning twenty 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:09.960 one with family and friends looking out from the corner 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.279 of the room, their webcam images tiled on the screen. 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.640 A few days earlier, British psychiatrist Rob Baskin zoomed into 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.760 the funeral of his mother, who had succumbed to the virus. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.320 For many, Zoom has become not just a way to socialize, 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:29.200 but the social fabric itself. Yuan is as surprised as 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.760 anyone else at this turn of events. He didn't set 0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:33.800 out to create a business that would be a household 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:37.080 name in these circumstances or any others. And while it's 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.680 a testament to the technology that it has mostly handled 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:43.080 a twentyfold surge in usage in other ways, the company, 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.200 like many others, was blindsided by the past few weeks. 0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.320 I never thought that overnight the whole world would be 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.120 using Zoom, he says. Unfortunately, we did not prepare well 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:59.520 mentally and strategy wise. Historically, giant communications networks Facebook, Twitter, A, 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.640 T and T have all had their growing pains, but 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.480 none had to go through them in just weeks. In 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:09.520 times as vertiginous as these, even success can be brutal. 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:15.640 Yuan has always been frustrated by the inconvenient fact of distance. 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.240 The younger son of husband and wife mining engineers, he 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:23.120 grew up in China's Shandong Province, a peninsula extending into 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.479 the Yellow Sea. Studying math and computer science at Shandong University, 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:29.600 he had to take a ten hour train ride to 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:32.640 see his girlfriend, a problem he solved by marrying her. 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:37.520 At twenty two. Yuan, now fifty, idolized Bill Gates and 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:41.279 was determined to work in Silicon Valley. His visa application, though, 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.119 was denied on his first try and on the next 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:47.320 seven after a bureaucratic mix up. It took nearly two 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.320 years of persistence, but on the ninth attempt he got 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:55.000 into the US. Yuan found a job in California at WebEx, 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.159 then a start up. By the late ninety nineties, technology 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.479 had made real time video chat long a sci Fi staple, 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.640 a reality, and web X was among the first companies 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.440 to make a working product. Yuan was one of ten 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:10.800 engineers when he joined web X, and by the time 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:13.760 Cisco Systems acquired it a decade later, he was vice 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:18.200 president for engineering, managing eight hundred workers. Seeing the rise 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.240 of the iPhone and its imitators, he became convinced the 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.080 company needed a product that worked on mobile phones, not 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:28.600 just PCs. Cisco's leadership didn't agree, and Yuan left in 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.720 twenty eleven to found Zoom Video Communications, Inc. Taking a 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:37.800 contingent of engineers with him. Headquartered in San Jose, Zoom 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.920 built a research and development team in China, where engineers 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.239 would work for far less than their American counterparts. Yuan 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.680 personally contacted every company that considered Zoom, but went with 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.560 a competitor, something he still does. Zoom was appealing in 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.920 part because it was a neutral platform. It wasn't tethered 0:07:54.960 --> 0:07:58.160 to Apple like face Time or Google or Microsoft like 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:02.360 hangouts in Skype. Anyone, even someone without an account, could 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.080 join a meeting from any device just by clicking a 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.280 link in a text or email. Hosts could record video 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.160 and audio and generate transcripts, and it was easy for 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.360 people to screen share. If you can keep your meetings 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:18.760 under forty minutes and one participants, and honestly, please do, 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.640 you can use Zoom for free. Clients who pay a 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.880 monthly fee of nineteen dollars per meeting host can gather 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.600 as many as a thousand people on a single video call. 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:33.959 In addition, the technology offers users a flattering soft focus 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.640 mode and the menu of digital backdrops the Northern Lights, 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:42.160 the Golden gate Bridge of Pristine Beach. These panoramas free 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.040 home users from worrying about whether they're half dressed, spouse 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:50.840 and children are in the webcam siteline. Customized Zoom backdrops 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:54.080 are canvases for self expression, and the art form has 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:58.280 already grown baroque. A video producer named Dan Crowd created 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:00.800 one recently that looks like a normal office, but as 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:03.600 a Trump Loy animation, in which the door opens and 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:08.640 crowd himself walks in obliviously interrupting his own meeting in 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:12.320 a world of philosopher CEOs promising to transform the human 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.760 condition through ride hailing or renting shared workspaces. Yuan is 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:21.000 passionate about video conferencing software and uninterested in declaiming on 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.960 other topics. After Zoom's valuation surpassed one billion dollars in seventeen, 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:29.560 he publicly scoffed at the unicorn label, saying it didn't 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.280 mean anything unless the business continued to grow. When Zoom 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:37.800 went public in April nineteen, shares jumped se on the 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.600 first day of trading, giving it a value of sixteen 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.400 billion dollars and you on a net worth of three billion. 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.720 He went on Bloomberg Television complaining that the price is 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:51.240 too high and implored employees to get back to work. Today, 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.880 the company's market capitalization is about thirty two billion dollars. 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.079 Zoom had an early glimpse of the coronavirus at work 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.400 the company. These Chinese offices and R and D facilities 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:06.560 closed in late January they've since reopened. We were thoughtful 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:08.720 and a little bit paranoid about what was to come, 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.960 which has turned out to be a good thing. Kelly Steckelberg, 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.320 the company's chief financial officer, says by Zoom from her home. 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:19.600 Zoom was quick to shutter its San Jose headquarters, sending 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:22.839 employees home two weeks before Santa Clara County issued its 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:26.280 shelter in place order, a decision that was admittedly easier 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:31.000 for a video conferencing technology company. After Japan and Italy 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:35.000 closed schools in late February and early March, Zoom removed 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.120 the time limits on its free products for educational institutions 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.199 in those countries. It continued to do so as school 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.480 shut down spread globally. Still, Yuan thought the disruption would 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.600 be brief. Then in mid March, his kids schools closed. 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.200 When Zoom's daily users passed one million, he began to 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:56.920 realize what the crisis would mean for his company. Since then, 0:10:57.000 --> 0:10:59.720 it's been a dead sprint to cope with the ballooning demand. 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:02.960 When you're on a Zoom meeting, the app adjusts bandwidth 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:07.240 so that one participant's poor signal doesn't degrade another user's experience. 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.680 Zoom does this by linking each participant to the closest 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:14.600 of seventeen data centers it rents worldwide. If one center 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.080 is overloaded, it sends traffic to the next closest. To 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.760 keep up with its new audience, the company has added 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.120 two data centers, and it's been buying more of the 0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:27.200 cloud storage capacity it uses for surge protection. Zoom relies 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.320 heavily on Amazon Web Services, as well as on Oracle 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:34.680 for cloud computing. So far, these efforts have paid off. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.040 There have been complaints of poor call quality, and Zoom's 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.480 website was briefly down for maintenance, but the platform has bent, 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.600 not broken under the new demands. On other fronts, Zoom 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.280 has looked less deft. Its sudden prominence has brought at 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:52.880 the attention of security researchers and privacy advocates, and the 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:56.679 last week of March saw a steady stream of damaging revelations. 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:00.320 On March twenty fourth, Consumer Reports detailed how z Whom's 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:03.160 privacy policy let it share the content of video chats 0:12:03.200 --> 0:12:07.200 with ad tracking companies. The piece highlighted how hosts don't 0:12:07.240 --> 0:12:10.679 need participants permission to record videos or make and share 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:14.559 transcripts hosts can read texts that participants exchange on the 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:19.000 apps chat function to The publication also noted Zoom's Panopticon 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:23.120 like attendee attention tracking tool, which alerted a host if 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.640 people clicked over to a different window on their computers 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:29.440 for more than thirty seconds, suggesting they were otherwise occupied. 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.319 Two days later, tech site Motherboard revealed that Zoom's iPhone app, 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:38.400 which was built using Facebook software, was sending user data 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:42.319 to the social network giant without alerting users. On March thirty, 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.800 former National Security Agency hacker Patrick Wardle blogged about flaws 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:49.560 that would let attackers put malware on a computer or 0:12:49.640 --> 0:12:53.200 hijacked the webcam and microphone. The next day, the website 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.240 The Intercept reported that while Zoom claimed to guard user 0:12:56.320 --> 0:12:59.800 data using end to end encryption, the strongest available privacy 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:04.280 per section, that wasn't true, and on April third, University 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.400 of Toronto researchers published a paper revealing that the company 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.760 sometimes routed meetings through servers in China even when all 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.120 the participants were outside the country, raising the possibility that 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:17.920 Chinese authorities might try to listen in. Zoom was also 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:22.000 attracting the interest of trolls elementary school teachers getting their 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.920 classrooms up and running found their sessions disrupted by zoom bombers, 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:31.520 with malicious interlopers joining to shout racist epithets or screenshare pornography. 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.480 New York City's school system, the largest in the country, 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.440 has banned the service, shifting to Microsoft teams and Google hangouts. 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:43.200 Meet White supremacists started zoom bombing virtual Torah sessions and 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:47.800 webinars on anti Semitism with images of swastikas. The company 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:50.520 has since amended its privacy policy to make clear that 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:53.960 video and chats would not be shared, updated its iPhone 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.760 app to stop sending data to Facebook, and patched the 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:01.120 vulnerabilities that Wardle found. On April one, Chief product officer 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.400 oded Gal addressed the encryption issue in a repentant, if 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.400 euphemism plagued post on the company blog. While we never 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.760 intended to deceive any of our customers, he wrote, we 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:15.040 recognize that there is a discrepancy between the commonly accepted 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.000 definition of end to end in encryption and how we 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:21.960 were using it. Later that day, Yuan posted his own 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.840 apology and said that Zoom would probe for further security weaknesses. 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:30.520 Remove the attention tracker, offer training against Zoom bombing attacks, 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.720 changed the default screen sharing settings to make things harder 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:38.400 for trolls, and issue a transparency report detailing government data requests. 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:41.720 When the University of Toronto report was published on April third, 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.280 Uan responded the same day, blaming the China server issue 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:48.600 on zooms scramble for capacity and announcing that the company 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.880 had corrected it. On April four, Zoom users got an 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.400 email telling them that all meetings would now automatically have passwords. 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.280 Yuan argues that Zoom's issues stem not just from its 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.880 explosive grow oath, but also from the new types of 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.040 users flocking to it. We built this as a platform 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.920 for knowledge workers for businesses with I T departments, he says, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.200 sitting against a digital backdrop of the San Francisco Hills 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.360 that he obscures as he leans into his webcam. For 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.560 Zoom users in non pandemic times, he goes on, there 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:20.840 would be a tech support person helping them set up 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:23.520 their screen sharing settings and reminding them to have a 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:26.760 password in a work setting, for better or worse. We're 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.360 more resigned to the idea that our boss will snoop 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:32.760 on us, so that we don't slack off. Unlike elementary 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:37.160 schools and happy our organizers, Zooms corporate clients have their 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.640 own data and privacy policies, and at the office even 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.960 neo Nazis try to watch their language. Yuan's explanations are 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.960 more convincing for some lapses than others. If anything, expectations 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:51.600 should be higher for a collaboration app given that it 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.360 engages with sensitive data. I'm granting access to a camera, 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:58.880 a microphone, to the screen, everything that happens on the computer, 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.480 says Ralph, a longtime chief information officer now at electronics 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:07.160 manufacturer Lamentum. Zoom, in other words, should be the last 0:16:07.200 --> 0:16:10.840 company to be casual about security. It may be that 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.400 the main trait that let Zoom succeed is now haunting it. 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:17.840 Its focus on simplifying the arcane and buggy process of 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.520 video conferencing has created a product that's also simpler for 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.040 others to manipulate. Yuan concedes that there could be a 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:28.600 tension between security and simplicity. It may be time to 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:32.280 revisit that, he says, Although it's hard to imagine, at 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.560 some point the pandemic will end, Will Zoom go back 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.200 to being a corporate video conferencing company. I have no answer, 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.840 Yuan says. His board asked him that a few days earlier, 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.240 and he told them the same thing. Currently, while many 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.200 new users aren't paying for the service, some have sprung 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:53.000 for Zooms paid tiers, and some corporate clients upgraded when 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:56.920 they sent their workforces home. On April one, Alliance Bernstein 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.280 analyst Zane Crane said the pandemic could generate a few 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.640 hundred million in additional revenue. That's on top of the 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.160 more than five million dollars Zoom predicted for the coming 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:10.400 fiscal year in its last earnings call, a Zoom webinar 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:13.720 held on March fourth, just after it closed its headquarters. 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:17.720 Given the choice, Uan makes clear this isn't the path 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.520 he would have chosen for himself or for the company, 0:17:20.600 --> 0:17:22.880 But he says he no longer pretends he's in control. 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.880 You can't go back. That would not be responsible for now. 0:17:26.920 --> 0:17:29.280 We have to embrace this new paradigm and figure out 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.600 how to make it work. Zoom is now owned by 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.280 the whole world, he adds. Then he has to go. 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:41.200 It's lunchtime and his mother is patiently waiting, and that's 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.840 the accidental social network it's this week's cover story, written 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.680 by Drake Bennett and Nico Grant Jason. It's a must read. 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:49.520 Check out that story and all of the stories that 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.240 are in the magazine also at bloomberg dot com and 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:54.239 on the Bloomberg Terminal, and be sure to check out 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:56.920 our daily radio show that's two to six pm Wall 0:17:56.960 --> 0:17:58.600 Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.