I have been using Zoom nearly daily for the better part of 3 -4 years. For the bulk of that time, Zoom has been ahead of Google. That is until today.

The Situation: I had a client call but was still on the go. At one point, I started walking and looked down at my phone and everything I had been pining for for nearly 4 years was looking me in the face. I no longer desperately needed headphones with a boom mic. The biggest MUTE BUTTON spanning the width of my phone. It was pulled up automatically for me.

In the instance I saw it, I wanted to hug the PM and engineers who made it happen. Finally!!! I wanted to do a happy dance but I was too busy working. I also provided an audio button that was half the width of the phone, easy for fat fingers to hit, that let me pull up the menu to toggle audio source (think: find that silly Bluetooth headphone that randomly disconnected itself). In an instant, I could easily mute and unmute in a quick moment without fiddling with my phone. And I could troubleshoot that pesky set of headphones that seem to be more moody than a teenager. Hallelujah!!

Google calls this “On-the-Go” mode where ”Your camera and video are turned off to help you focus on what you’re doing. Stay aware of your surroundings.” For me, I am more worried about my listeners than my surroundings; I live in the middle of nowhere, and typically, I am “on the go” because it takes longer to get where I need to be than I expect.

This was a perfect case of customer delight. While they haven’t quite mastered the ‘Switch Devices’ mode like Zoom, I was able to use the odd little code for my meeting to login to Google Meets and Switch to my computer when I got where I needed to be.

Why oh why did it take Google so long to do this. AND why, oh why, hasn’t Zoom caught up yet. The number of people who log into group meetings while walking and need to mute and unmute is crazy. This shouldn’t have taken us (product community) soo long.

I find myself wondering, was it the number of people hit in the cross-walk, in fender benders, or the number of executives working from home who aren’t at their desk and want to hide the fact that they aren’t in the office, I will not know unless I can interview a Google Meet PM. But I don’t care. This is a great example of customer delight. But also a great example of poor prioritization. Why did it take 4 years after everyone went remote for this to become a basic feature of video conferencing?

Reasons (I speculate):

• Not enough requests

• Trying too hard not to build for what the builders wanted

• Executives not wanting to admit they would love it because they are not at their desks when there team is required to be?

• Internal politics

• Someone thought they could get promoted for shipping lots of easier features faster

No matter the reason, I can’t imagine it was great because no feature has impressed me this much since Zoom released the ability to switch devices. Without video conferencing, my business would not exist. I have spent roughly $500 on countless boom mic headphones over the last 2 years to compensate for this shortfall.

THANK YOU Google for delighting me this week. It was so impressive, I regret having renewed Zoom. It is that much of a gamechanger.