I've been thinking about this, what led to the rise of Zoom? The pandemic sure helped, but, why this platform in particular?

Skype seemed to be dominant prior to the pandemic. I would say Zoom's functionality is better for group meetings. Does this account for their rise, was it entirely organic?

Reminiscent of the rise of Facebook.

Also of note, it's conceivable that the CCP has access to their feeds.

Personal experience. Prior to the pandemic, on the somewhat uncommon occasions that my meetings required someone to video call, it was almost always done with Skype (the alternatives were Zoom and Google Hangouts). Early in the pandemic, Skype retained this, but it quickly flipped to everyone using Zoom. Found it rather bizarre how quickly everyone flipped, without any real reasoning given (perhaps the original meeting organizers had reasons in mind, granted, and everyone just followed along afterwards, like with masks).