Microsoft and Google may have to compete with Zoom email and calendar services as soon as next year

Kareem Anderson

Microsoft Google Zoom

As a successful 2020 ends for relative videoconferencing darling Zoom, the company is taking the momentous mindshare it accumulated in the year and looking to leverage it for two new potential services in email and calendar offerings.

According to a report from the Information, Zoom has been tinkering away on an email service it may be ready to launch as soon as next year in addition to a calendar service some time thereafter. There are few details at this point regarding the particulars of either Zoom-led solutions but a pivot into deeper collaborative enterprise options makes the most straightforward sense for both its users and investors.

With potential light at the end of the pandemic tunnel as vaccines make their way to swaths of the globe, shelter-in-place, work-from-home and remote orders will eventually lax and that could leave the now prominent videoconferencing giant looking for a life raft as in-person meetings resume.

While on paper, news of Zoom crafting its own email and calendar solutions might momentarily juice its stock evaluation, there will be serious concerns as to what degree the company can parlay its current popularity in videoconferencing during a global quarantine to encouraging its users to switch from industry titans Microsoft and Google. Another potential outlier Zoom should be considering is that in its efforts to expand its adoption the company has made it possibly too easy to currently integrate its usage with what would be its competition.

Zoom was reached for comment but decline at the time. There is no formal or official news regarding the email and calendar solutions coming from the company, but Zoon will definitely continue to be a company on Microsoft’s radar in 2021.