Proton is a technology company offering several tech based solutions with an end-to-end encryption.

Proton in Effort to Become the New Google – Without Using Your Data. Well, Proton, the encrypted – email company is planning to move to mainstream operations. Since the company started its operations in 2014, ProtonMail is extensively used by security-conscious users. The company provides user-friendly email encrypted services. Now, the company is trying extend this to a whole lot more.

Yesterday morning, ProtonMail announced that it is changing its name to, just, Proton as one move ahead to support its wider ambitions in the realm of online privacy. The company is planning to move forward in creating a collective platform “ecosystem” of connected products that can be accessed with one paid subscription. The company is aiming to allow subscribers to access encrypted calendar, VPN, and file storage platform in addition to encrypted emails.

Proton vs. Google

This all part of the master plan of Proton’s CEO, Andy Yen. He aspires to bring Proton closer to the tech giants, like Google. Andy Yen is a Taiwanese – born who moved to Geneva, Switzerland. The new place worked as a natural enforcer to start a privacy-focused startup. The company received a natural support due to Switzerland’s privacy- friendly legal system.

Today, he is leading a company that employees 400 employees and holds over 70 million users. He also pointed out there is a significant danger to data privacy due to Apple’s and Google’s market dominance. There is a danger to data encryption that was used as a tactic in the War on Terror.

An interview was taken from Andy Yen. The excerpts of the interview are covered below.

Online Privacy

When asked Andy about his view of online privacy his views were:

Nowadays Google and Apple are focusing and talking a lot about privacy. And both of them have their own version to it. Let’s contrast them with our view to explain more effectively. In simple words, Google explains that nobody can exploit your data except for us. Proton’s definition is much more genuine and authentic. We say that nobody can exploit your data. Moreover, we are in process of building a platform that accesses your data as little as possible. We are making it possible by using end-to-end encryption as we have the view that the most optimum way to protect your data is not to have it in the first place.

When asked about antitrust enforcement and reforms around it, in context of Apple’s claim saying that if you want to have more apps on the app store other than our own, we will have to reduce the security measure on our platform.

Google, Apple and Meta

Andy’s views on this were:

Apple is basically making us understand that it is the only company whose app store who has kept your privacy measures safe in an attempt to monopolize the privacy space. Supposedly they claim that they have cracked the code to maintain your privacy, which is a little absurd to accept.

If you view the FTC lawsuit that was against Facebook, here the focus is that privacy and competition are both sides of the story. In social media, Facebook or Instagram has monopoly that is owned by the same company, Meta. If you don’t agree with its privacy policies, then you don’t have much option to replace it with. Thus, more players are needed to counter this competition. In such case, when there are more players n the market, privacy will become the important selling point.

Google controls android services that is used by a majority which puts them on a massive advantage mainly because the users don’t pay much attention in changing the defaults. Again, here there are little to no options available for the users to select and choose from. Proton is trying to create more platforms that ca be used as an alternative for the users to choose from.

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Bottom Line

Proton is coming into the mainstream to challenge market leaders in an attempt to create more options to make online privacy the heart of application and platform development. Let’s see what the future holds for Proton and encryption front.