Comment by rakoo
6 years ago
There is also the huge advantage of not having to install anything. It's already hard enough to convince my friends to switch to any open source videoconferencing in-browser solution, I would never go through having them install a whole application.
"No install" is a major selling point, unfortunately.
"No install" is a major selling point, unfortunately.
I'm not sure that's entirely true, but since most people are now familiar with the likes of mobile app stores or one-click/one-command installations that Just Work(TM), the insane complication and risk that come with trying to install and manage software on a major desktop platform like Windows is now obvious for all to see.
It depends heavily on the market.
For B2B products, it's a huge win for driving market penetration on otherwise locked-down work computers. While development and IT sometimes get exceptions easily, the majority of business users have pretty locked down machines with minimal flexibility in installing software.
For consumer markets, you're right that it may not be as big of a factor, other than user expectations on the Just Works(TM) model from app stores.
The other side of your B2B scenario, though, is that a lot of places won't be allowed to use unofficial SaaS anyway, because of regulatory and legal concerns, corporate spending authorities, etc. If you can get your desktop software selected as the standard across a large organisation, that's a very nice win.
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