Oracle’s Larry Ellison calls Zoom an ‘essential service’ as coronavirus forces remote work
- Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison called Zoom an “essential service” in a video posted Monday.
- Zoom has seen explosive growth coupled with a spike in privacy concerns as more workers have been told to stay at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
- Ellison said he believes Zoom will continue to be important to businesses once workers return to the office.
Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison gave Zoom high praise this week, calling it an “essential service” for his business and others around the world.
Zoom has seen enormous growth as more and more workers have been instructed to stay at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Zoom said its daily users spiked to 200 million in March compared with 10 million in December. The service’s growth has been credited in part to its availability across many different platforms and it’s free use for calls up to 40 minutes.
Ellison said in the video posted Monday he believes Zoom will continue to be an important to businesses once workers return to the office.
“We’re looking forward to the economy being reopened, we’re looking forward to going back to work, but the way we work will never again be the same,” Ellison said. “We will now meet not just face-to-face, we’ll meet sometimes face-to-face and sometimes digitally via Zoom.”
Along with is growth in users, Zoom has seen concerns spike about how it is protecting users’ privacy. The Senate advised members not to use the service, according to Ars Technica and the New York City Department of Education banned its use for remote learning. A group of state attorneys general are probing the company after one of the officials was “zoombombed” on a forum about the Census, meaning the chat box was filled with profanities.
Ellison’s support could prove useful to Zoom as it wades through the new challenges of becoming a consumer tech company. Ellison is an influential billionaire with ties to the Trump administration. He has supported Trump’s campaign and even told the President about an anti-malaria drug Trump ended up touting as a possible treatment for the coronavirus, according to The New York Times. Oracle CEO Safra Catz served on Trump’s transition team in 2016.