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.