> The reason it's sometimes a big deal and sometimes not is because of echo cancellation software. But echo cancellation is a hard problem when you don't know t

> The reason it's sometimes a big deal and sometimes not is because of echo cancellation software. But echo cancellation is a hard problem when you don't know the precise physical characteristics of the setup Sort of. Software can approximate good echo cancellation for most conversations just by bringing down the mic volume when someone else is talking. Most meetings aren't supposed to have people talking over each other the whole time. Add to that the fact that most laptops have decent echo cancellation now and you can frequently get away with it. It's still something of a tragedy of the commons scenario though. If one person is creating an echo, then the speakers on the speaker's computer will play that echo while they are talking, which will get fed back it to the microphone, creating still more echo. That's when you really start to get major problems, but it's avoidable if no more than one person is using speakers.