As Students Return to School, Zoom Crashes

NEW YORK (AP) — Teachers and parents got a brief glimpse of a new kind of pandemic-era nightmare Monday.

That's when Zoom — the video-conferencing service that powers everything from distance learning to business meetings to casual, socially distant get-togethers — abruptly went dead.

For roughly two-and-a-half hours Monday morning, many users were unable to load the Zoom website.

The timing was less than ideal, since many schools across the U.S. were just starting online instruction after a summer surge in the coronavirus pandemic scotched many plans to reopen classes with students present in the flesh.