I don't even understand how it goes popular in the first place when Skype and Google Meet already existed before the Pandemic. It even had a whole "Chinese company/servers" scare too but it still held on.

My work uses zoom as an over engineered pager system

Why is Zoom even still popular?

I guess because that's a standard tool everyone in business has. Also the Microsoft alternatives (including Skype after buyout) sucks. I don't use these tools (used Skype before Microsoft purchased it), so this is not my personal opinion.

this. my last companies security team was crazy aggressive but would allow zoom meetings right after the big security incident.

jitsi is good feature wise, but it's not widely advertised..