Recently Andy Yen dumped a whole boatload of suggestions about the future of Proton. Article is machine-translated so some discrepancies may exist.
Regarding Chromium:
But suddenly, it’s mainly a problem of open web standards, don’t you think? This is the discussion we always have with Sir Tim, the W3C and others. To some extent, this battle is long lost, to be completely honest…Yes, I think this battle is already lost.
Everyone assumed we were building a browser because a job posting came up, but that’s not necessarily the case. We do a lot of web-related things at Proton, and there are plenty of reasons why I might want to hire someone who is very fluent in browsers. That doesn’t mean we’re building one.…I don’t say anything at all, because I don’t know what I will build in the future.
I am often asked the question of instant messaging: “Create a chat”, etc. Do I think we will ever do it? We’ll end up doing everything, it’s just a question of schedule and timing…You also have to understand the logic: with Proton Workspace, we want to compete with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace .
Interesting confirmation of what we all probably already suspected.
I like Proton as far as a premium product is likable. But Google already taught me that putting all my eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Ecosystems trap you and make it a hassle to switch. Same goes for Proton because eventually it will enshittify or be enshittified by regulators and you will wish not having done everything with Proton.
And the bigger the ecosystem grows, the higher the cost and will it really be worth to pay ever increasing subscription fees for a service when you only use 20% of the features? Because I think that‘s where we are already headed.
Depends on who you are and your set up. I use a lot of Proton products because the bang for the buck is excellent and they have a really good track record of privacy oriented practices since I joined in 2016 or so. I also have backstops everywhere – synced local backups of passwords, calendars, drive, and mail, my own domains for emails, payment through a privacy.com card, and so on. Bazzell’s book Extreme Privacy does an excellent job in setting this sort of transferable system up. If Proton does enshittify, which I’d be really surprised if they do because its their single major selling point and comparative advantage, then I can still jump ship to keepass, Tuta, local storage or a NAS, and a different VPN service.
But until then, their products are quite good and I like having a single company I can recommend to non-tech folks like my wife and parents that offers everything they’re used to but with much more privacy than Google.
The problem with Proton is that they’ve been lying for years… From the time they were founded until 2021, they brazenly lied to make themselves look better than their competitors. It’s the least terrible email provider, but they’re still not good.
Ecosystems are a non-issue when they make it easy to export your data and import it somewhere else.
The fight in an constantly evolving space cannot be lost, see what happend with the web browsers from back then.
I interpret it as they want to be an ecosystem, because most people want the convenience of ecosystems. And far down that line, that means it will have more services like a chat and phone and browser etc.
On the grapheneos forum they were quick to say “they’re making a phone!”, but I think he’s just describing what it means to try to be an ecosystem.They want to be google, they just never bothered with the ‘don’t be evil’ part.
Google is an ad company, using surveillance and tracking to sell more ads, is that what you mean? Or Google started as a search engine, and now they’re an ecosystem? What about Protons business model is evil?
Google is an ecosystem company
Proton is an ecosystem company
Previous customer, no longer my problem.
But do you consider it inherently harmful to have a collection of services with a common login and shared resources like contact list or integrated calendar? It’s always possible to have one provider per service, like signal for messages, a standalone calendar, a standalone video meeting program, etc, but then we expect users to make a lot of informed decisions. There seems to be a demand for ecosystems where people don’t have to connect services to their own stack, is this bad in itself, or can there be both good and bad actors in this area?
Every time someone says ‘bad actor’ I immediately think of Nicolas Cage, I would rather not.
What guarantees Proton will be good?
When Proton bought competitor SimpleLogin, was that good for the average person? How about when they bought competitor Standard Notes?
The people interested in privacy don’t assume something is good until proven otherwise. They assume it is bad until proven good.
I don’t think we can ever trust that someone will stay good forever. But I also don’t want to dismiss someone because they might turn evil in the future. For me I mostly look for the question “how easy/hard would it be to suddenly move to a different provider”. I.e. am I locked in?
Again, you’re coming from the position that Corporation is good until proven bad, a position that I thought everyone was shown, time and time again, is a bad position.
Can you provide an example of a corporation that you can prove is good and will not turn bad in the future?
Let’s turn our attention back to “what about Proton’s business model is evil”, where I told you two evil things Proton did that apparently aligned with its business model: Destroying two competitors.
The only apparent defense you have for these two evils is to say a different thing is not apparently evil (vendor lock-in?) but a lack of evil does not absolve evil . I’d rather focus on that than being dragged down into a pedantic debate about which types of Proton emails really do lock users in (as anyone who has ever signed up for a website with an email address will tell you, it does).
