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.
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.