Interview Proton: “the world’s first ecosystem that protects privacy by default”

Formerly ProtonMail, it is now under the common banner of Proton that all the company’s products are brought together. A new direction for the company specializing in the protection of privacy, which is now focusing on the establishment of a coherent ecosystem served by a new visual identity. On this occasion, Clubic was able to interview Bart Butler, CTO of the company, about what this change means and what Proton has in store for us in the future.

If for several years, Proton has succeeded in its challenge of making security easy to use and accessible to all, it was still missing an essential element to compete with the largest consumer companies: a visual identity common to all its products and recognizable in a glance, similar to what Google can offer.

It is now done. After a rather quiet year in 2021 in terms of new products, the company is back in force with a new site, proton.me, which brings together in one place all the company’s flagship products: Mail of course, but also Drive, Calendar, and VPN. A way for Proton to easily highlight all of its products but also an important improvement for users, who now have all the services just a click away. But what does this major change mean for Proton now and in the future? Bart Butler answered our questions.

Why do you think Proton needed a new visual identity and what does it mean for users?

The move from ProtonMail to Proton is a key part of the company’s evolution and the democratization of privacy among traditional users. But it’s more than a new logo or brand, it’s the world’s first ecosystem that protects privacy by default. The Proton ecosystem brings together all of our products with improved integration and functionality, as well as a better user experience that makes privacy affordable and accessible to everyone.

Our new visual identity is designed to give a strong “family feel” to all of our apps and enhance the user experience, and our new site, proton.me, serves as a central hub for all products in the Proton ecosystem.

This purple color…. You might be mistaken for thinking that you are the new Yahoo! …

We offer the privacy and protection that other services like Yahoo, Google and others have refused to provide in the past. But the color purple has always been the color of Proton. When we first launched Proton Mail in 2014, we used a darker, more muted purple that evolved over time. Today we’re going back to our roots but we’ve updated our purple to be bolder, compatible with light and dark backgrounds, and more appealing to users.

In responses to comments, you acknowledged that 2021 had been a bit slow in terms of development. Have you put all the security foundations in place to iterate on products more quickly?

One of the biggest challenges in growing a company like Proton is finding a balance between launching new products and perfecting existing ones. This is especially difficult when dealing with privacy-focused products that need to be secure and easy to use at the same time. However, we spent 2021 putting the technical foundations in place to enable our teams to create and deploy new updates and products at a greater pace in the future.

We have also significantly increased the size of our team, welcoming fantastic new talent to ensure we have the skills in-house to meet the needs of our users and to continue to improve our products and services.

You announced a public beta of an email client for desktop. Can you tell us more about this proof of concept? Is this a business-oriented product for Microsoft Outlook users who would like to switch or a way to provide more security to the end user?

There are several potential uses for a desktop client and providing Outlook users with a privacy-oriented alternative is one of them. However, work on the beta is ongoing and we will evaluate its usability and viability when we are able to share this beta with testing users.

We know your commitment to open source. We have also seen recently, with Log4j, that some widely used open source projects don’t have enough volunteers to maintain and secure them, making them vulnerable. Do you use and contribute to other open source projects other than your own products and OpenPGP.js?

When it comes to open source libraries, we mainly focus on our products and OpenPGP. You are right that maintaining open source projects is complicated and time consuming, which is why we focus our efforts on a small amount of them so as not to spread ourselves too thin and to maintain their quality.

On the one hand, Proton received 1.9 million euros from the European Union, which you highlight on your new site, and on the other hand, we hear that the EU wants to weaken encryption to combat violence against children. What is your position on this?

We believe that all companies, technology or not, have an obligation to act responsibly. We have clear terms and conditions that state that Proton products must not be used for illegal purposes, and our security and anti-abuse teams proactively remove users who we believe are violating our rules.

That being said, we believe encryption is vital to protecting people’s fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of expression. There are plenty of ways to fight crime without compromising encryption.

You launched Proton to provide a privacy-friendly alternative to Google. After Mail, Calendar, Drive and VPN, what other areas would it be wise for you to focus on (messages, search engine, browser, etc.)? Furthermore, do you intend to create everything yourself or would you be ready to sign a partnership with a third party if it could prove useful (Signal, Threema, Duck, Brave, etc.)?

Currently, we are focused on perfecting the products we have and finalizing the deployment of Proton Calendar and Proton Drive. Long term, our goal is to grow our ecosystem, and while we haven’t made a final decision yet on what products we might add, anything our Big Tech competitors offer is potentially possible.

In order to maintain technical excellence, we prefer to create our own products so we do few commercial partnerships. However, we work alongside other privacy companies when it comes to campaigning on issues that unite us, such as privacy or competition legislation.

Thank you