A tech company you can actually like!

Summary

This video discusses Proton, a tech company offering end-to-end encrypted email and a suite of privacy-focused productivity tools. Founded by CERN scientists post-Snowden, Proton has grown to over 100 million users, offering services like VPN, calendar, drive, and password manager. It stands out for its sustainable business model, user-friendly design, and commitment to privacy, differentiating it from competitors like Google and Mozilla.

Takeaways

• 📢 Tech companies are facing scrutiny for prioritizing revenue over user privacy, with Google recently being ruled against by a federal judge.
• 🗣️ The script discusses the need for tech companies to apologize to users, implying a lack of ethical practices in the industry.
• 🔒 Post-Snowden, there's been a surge in demand for encrypted internet services, highlighting the insecurity of traditional email.
• 💼 ProtonMail was founded by CERN scientists to provide an email service with end-to-end encryption, enhancing privacy.
• 🔑 ProtonMail uses PGP encryption by default, making it easy for users without requiring manual key management.
• 🌐 Proton has expanded beyond email to offer a suite of privacy-focused services, including VPN, calendar, drive, password manager, and more.
• 📈 The company has seen significant growth, with over 100 million sign-ups across services and a rapid release of new features.
• 💼 Proton's business model relies on subscription fees for premium features, allowing it to remain independent and financially sustainable.
• 🌟 A key differentiator for Proton is its commitment to building a complete ecosystem that can potentially replace mainstream services like Google Apps.
• 🔍 The script points out areas where Proton could improve, such as its ownership structure and compliance with legal warrants, affecting user trust.

Q & A

What was the catalyst for the demand for more encrypted internet services?

The demand for more encrypted internet services surged after Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 about government spying on people.

What was the inherent issue with email security before reforms?

Email, developed in the 70s and 80s, was notoriously insecure with no real privacy built in by default, and encryption techniques like PGP were not universally adopted due to their complexity.

Why was it challenging to implement encryption across all email services?

Implementing encryption across all email services was challenging because it required agreement and correct implementation of a new standard by millions of different mail servers operated by different companies.

How does ProtonMail address the issue of email encryption?

ProtonMail offers real end-to-end encryption using PGP, automatically turning it on by default between all ProtonMail users, ensuring that even ProtonMail itself cannot read the emails.

What is the limitation of ProtonMail's encryption when interacting with non-ProtonMail users?

The limitation is that if the other party uses any other email provider, ProtonMail cannot enforce privacy, as it has no control over how other email providers handle encryption.

What other services did ProtonMail expand to after its initial email service?

ProtonMail expanded to Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, acquired Simple Login, launched Proton Pass, and later added Proton Docs and Proton Wallet to its ecosystem.

How does ProtonMail's business model differ from other privacy-focused tech companies?

ProtonMail's business model primarily relies on subscription fees for premium features, which is sustainable and allows the company to remain independent without external investments.

What is the significance of Proton's claim of having over 100 million sign-ups across its services?

The claim signifies that ProtonMail has achieved significant scale, which is important for investing in an ecosystem of apps and for network effects, suggesting it is not an insignificant player in the market.

What are some of the concerns raised about ProtonMail's compliance with legal warrants?

Some concerns include ProtonMail's compliance with Swiss legal warrants, which led to cases like the exposure of a French activist's IP address, raising debates about how much a privacy-focused company should comply with legal requests.

What is the role of the newly established Proton Foundation in ensuring the company's adherence to its mission?

The Proton Foundation is intended to ensure permanent adherence to Proton's mission. However, the exact details of the foundation's ownership and powers are not entirely clear, which some argue could be made more transparent.

How does the Proton ecosystem aim to compete with major players like Google's suite of apps?

The Proton ecosystem aims to compete by offering a complete set of privacy-focused productivity tools that are user-friendly and can theoretically replace services like Google's apps, with features like real-time collaborative editing and AI editors.

Outlines

00:00

🔒 The Rise of ProtonMail and Privacy-Focused Tech

The paragraph discusses the current state of tech companies, where many are involved in ethical controversies and lawsuits. It contrasts this with ProtonMail, a tech company that has been doing things 'right' and is gaining significant traction. ProtonMail was founded by CERN scientists in response to the Snowden revelations about government spying, aiming to provide end-to-end encryption for emails. The service automatically enables PGP encryption between its users, ensuring that even ProtonMail cannot read the content of the emails. The paragraph also touches on the limitations of ProtonMail when communicating with non-ProtonMail users and the company's open-source approach to building trust.

05:01

🚀 Proton's Expansion into a Privacy-Centric Ecosystem

This paragraph highlights Proton's evolution from a secure email provider to a comprehensive ecosystem of privacy-focused applications. After establishing ProtonMail, the company launched ProtonVPN, ProtonCalendar, and ProtonDrive, aiming to create a suite of productivity tools that prioritize user privacy. Proton also acquired SimpleLogin to enhance its services with email aliasing and introduced ProtonPass, a password manager. The paragraph emphasizes Proton's commitment to user privacy and its strategy to build an ecosystem that can compete with mainstream tech giants, noting the company's rapid development and feature releases, as well as its user growth and aggressive hiring, indicating solid expansion.

10:02

💼 Proton's Sustainable Business Model and Future Prospects

The final paragraph delves into Proton's business model, which has been sustainable and independent, allowing the company to grow without external investments. It contrasts Proton's model with competitors like Mozilla and Signal, which rely on donations or search engine partnerships. The paragraph also addresses concerns about Proton's ownership structure and its compliance with legal warrants, suggesting that while not perfect, Proton offers a solid balance of privacy features, user-friendly applications, and a robust ecosystem. The video concludes with a promotion for Brilliant, an online learning platform for STEM skills, which is sponsoring the video.

Keywords

💡Proton

Proton refers to Proton Technologies AG, a Swiss company known for its suite of privacy-focused software and services. It is the central theme of the video as it discusses the company's various products and its commitment to user privacy. The video mentions Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and other services that form an ecosystem centered around encrypted email.

💡End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption is a method of secure communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In the context of the video, Proton Mail uses this technology to ensure that emails are encrypted from the sender to the receiver, making it so that even Proton itself cannot access the content of the emails.

💡PGP

PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is a data encryption and decryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. The video explains that Proton Mail automatically enables PGP encryption between its users, simplifying the process that traditionally required manual key management.

💡Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who leaked classified information about mass surveillance programs, which increased public awareness about privacy issues. The video uses Snowden's revelations as a backdrop to explain the surge in demand for encrypted internet services like Proton Mail.

💡Ecosystem

In the video, 'ecosystem' refers to the suite of interconnected services and products that Proton offers, such as email, VPN, calendar, and document editing. The term is used to describe how these services work together to provide a comprehensive privacy-focused solution for users.

💡Scalability

Scalability in the video refers to Proton's ability to grow and expand its user base. It is highlighted as a key achievement for the company as it allows them to invest in building a comprehensive app ecosystem and to benefit from network effects, which are important for services like email and document collaboration.

💡Business Model

The business model discussed in the video refers to how Proton generates revenue to sustain its operations. It is noted that Proton relies on subscription fees for premium features rather than advertising or venture capital, which allows it to maintain independence and focus on user privacy.

💡Mozilla

Mozilla is mentioned in the video as an example of an open-source, privacy-focused organization that has struggled to create a sustainable business model. The video contrasts Mozilla's reliance on search engine deals with Proton's subscription model.

💡Signal

Signal is brought up as a privacy-focused messaging app that relies heavily on donations for funding. The video uses Signal to illustrate the challenges of sustainability that face many privacy-focused tech companies, unlike Proton's more stable business model.

💡Network Effects

Network effects are discussed in the context of how the value of a service increases with the number of users. For Proton Mail, this means that the service becomes more beneficial as more people use it, as it increases the likelihood that recipients also use Proton Mail, enhancing privacy.

💡Open Source

Open source refers to software where the source code is available for anyone to view, modify, and distribute. Proton's open-source clients are mentioned in the video as a way for users to verify that the company is not reading their emails, enhancing trust in Proton's privacy承诺.

Highlights

Tech companies are under scrutiny for prioritizing revenue over user privacy.

Google faces legal challenges for its data handling practices.

ProtonMail is highlighted as a tech company doing things right and gaining significance.

ProtonMail was founded by CERN scientists post-Snowden revelations to focus on encrypted email services.

ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption using PGP by default, enhancing privacy.

ProtonMail's encryption ensures that even the company cannot read user emails.

ProtonMail's open-source clients allow users to verify the privacy of their emails.

Proton expanded its services beyond email to include VPN, calendar, and drive for a complete productivity suite.

Proton acquired SimpleLogin and integrated it into ProtonPass, enhancing email privacy.

ProtonDocs and ProtonWallet were launched, expanding Proton's ecosystem.

Proton's ecosystem is built with privacy in mind, controlling encryption from passwords to document editing.

Proton's user base is in the tens of millions, indicating significant market penetration.

Proton's growth is aggressive, with new features and services being launched frequently.

Proton's business model is sustainable, relying on subscription fees for premium features.

Proton's independence is ensured by not taking external investments, allowing long-term mission adherence.

Proton's ownership structure includes a foundation to ensure mission adherence, though transparency could be improved.

Proton complies with Swiss legal warrants, which has led to some privacy concerns.

Proton's ecosystem is user-friendly and competitive with mainstream services.

Proton's success is attributed to its privacy features, ecosystem, and sustainable business model.

Brilliant is an online learning platform that teaches STEM skills interactively.

Transcripts

tech companies these days are not

exactly belov it a federal judge has

just ruled against Google the doj is

suing app to maximize their own Revenue

they might have to put more ads on their

websites you're on National Television

would you like now to apologize to the

victims of course some of them are

fairly ethical but then those often end

up being Niche players who struggle to

build large sustainable businesses that

really move the needle for the masses

what if I told you that there was a tech

company that was not only doing more or

less everything right but was also

starting to become big enough to

actually matter let's talk about

[Music]

proton by the way this video was not

sponsored by proton they did not ask me

to make it I did not join their

affiliate program so that we don't have

any conflicts of interest and if

anything I've actually been sponsored by

some of their competitors in the past

instead this video is actually sponsored

by brilliant more about them at the end

when in 2013 Edward Snowden revealed

just how much governments were spying on

people demand for more encrypted

internet services suddenly exploded and

email became an obvious candidate in

need of Reform developed in the 70s and

' 80s email was notoriously insecure and

had no real privacy built in by default

encryption techniques such as pgp had

been invented but were far from

Universal since email is just a million

different mail servers operated by a

million different companies that have

agreed to exchange messages any

comprehensive change would require each

one of those to agree to a new standard

and to implement it correctly not only

does that make encryption for example

technically challenging it's also

unlikely to happen given that the

world's largest email provider is you

know also the world's largest

advertising company maybe that's not a

coincidence as proton co-founder NN said

the government wants to read it Google

wants to read it Microsoft wants to read

it your it admin wants to read it so in

this environment there was a pretty

obvious Market Gap that a new player

could exploit just one year after the

Snowden Revelations protom mail was

found founded by a bunch of scientists

from CERN you know the place in

Switzerland where they make very small

particles go room room in a very big

circle and the idea was to make an email

service that offered real endtoend

encryption using pgp while also being

just as easy to use as Gmail or hot mail

pgp or pretty good privacy was invented

in 1991 but setting it up requires users

to manually exchange and set up long

strings of characters called keys with

each contact which means that it never

became truly widely adopted proton male

just turned pgp on automatically by

default between all proton mail users

meaning that proton itself couldn't

actually read that amazing secret recipe

that your grandma emailed you as long as

you both used proton mail now with that

you might have already noticed a pretty

obvious limitation of this service when

two people talk both of them need to

keep a secret in order for that secret

to remain a secret but if the other

party used any other email provider

proton couldn't actually enforce privacy

proton of course open sourced their

clients so you could be sure that they

didn't read your emails but for example

Google's official policy until 2017 was

to just read every email in a person's

Gmail inbox in order to Target ads at

their users there's not much proton can

do there overall then proton mail was a

more trustworthy email solution that

what came before it but obviously far

from a perfect solution so why do I

think this company is worth talking

about anyway well to start with as

imperfect as email inherently is it is

still necessary as the first step

towards a larger ecosystem email

provides identity and you can build a

bunch of other services around it which

is exactly what happened next even back

in 2016 founder Andy Yen said that quote

right now we're focusing on email but

you have the entire space of different

applications that can go to the endtoend

encrypted model and so in 2017 they

launched the now very popular proton VPN

and soon after they launched proton

calendar and Proton Drive to complete

the big productivity Trio then they

acquired simple login which is an email

aliasing tool and they rolled that into

their next big product proton pass a

great password manager that could now

also create email aliases on the Fly

just a few months ago they then bought

standard notes a Notes app that they're

integrating into their portfolio as we

speak and they also launched proton docs

which as You' expect is a document

editor much like Google Docs and

meanwhile their latest launch is proton

wallet which is an app that helps you

keep Bitcoin physically on your device

instead of on some online exchange

having a central service like email at

the core was a key enabler for this

ecosystem buildup and while email itself

might be inherently imperfect the whole

rest of the ecosystem proton has

basically complete control over and so

they can build those to be as private as

possible everything from your passwords

and proton pass to your keystrokes and

proton docks to your photos being

uploaded to Proton Drive everything is

encrypted and basically all of these

apps are also open source being able to

offer not just a single app for a narrow

use case but basically a whole

productivity ecosystem that could

theoretically replace something like the

Google apps for a person is a big deal

it's also the first major differentiator

between proton and the other kind of

ethical tech companies now personally

I'm still missing some things from the

proton ecosystem like a spreadsheets and

presentation app on top of docks

standard notes is just way too basic for

my use case Proton Drive doesn't handle

large files super smoothly Etc but

looking at their timeline you can

clearly see them accelerating the new

releases aggressively lately and the

same goes for new features too just in

the last few months we got real-time

collaborative editing in docs automatic

photo backups for Proton Drive and even

an AI editor called scribe which can run

entirely locally on your machine and

won't actually use your data for

training either pretty slick well and

perhaps most importantly apart from

minor annoyances all of these apps

actually work just as well and are just

as easy to figure out as their less

private competitors if the goal is to

make not just apps that are private but

also apps that can theoretically be used

by hundreds of millions of people around

the world then I think it is completely

non-negotiable to have really good ease

of use and also a full ecosystem that

the people are used to and I think

proton is way further ahead with this

than any of its competitors and this

shows in the numbers too while proton

does not publish exact figures they do

claim that over a 100 million people

have signed up across the various proton

Services while 50,000 people have joined

proton 2 now to be fair it's a little

bit hard to say how many of those people

and businesses are still using proton

today on similar web I can see that the

proton me domain gets a 40 to 50 million

visits a month while protonvpn dcom for

example gets 4 to 5 million the company

has many more domains and clearly many

people will also be using the mobile

apps instead of the websites so user

numbers are imprecise but the point is

that users have to be in the tens of

millions and this is not some

insignificant tiny player we also know

that in 2021 they claimed to have had 50

million signups so they must have at

least doubled those in 3 years and

looking at their career page they're

hiring pretty aggressively too which

also implies very solid growth I think

achieving anything like real scale is

proton's second big achievement and it's

really important for two big reasons

first only having scale allows them to

invest into actually building an

ecosystem of apps that can properly

compete with the big players and second

scale is tremendously important for

Network effects proton male as we've

said is only private if the people

around you are also using proton mail

while proton docks for example will

become truly powerful when we can expect

to send a link to them to random people

and expect them to edit it just like we

can with Google Docs or Microsoft Word

proton is still in the beginnings of

this but they seem to be accelerating

and they're already way further than any

of their competitors and meanwhile their

third differentiator is their business

model the company got started in 2014

with a crowdfunding campaign where they

claimed that 10,000 people donated over

half a million dollars to launch

development and right after that they

switched to Simply making users pay a

subscription fee at least for premium

features seems like a pretty obvious

business model but it's one that very

few of their privacy focused competitors

have managed to pull off at scale

Mozilla is an obvious open- Source

privacy Champion with hundreds of

millions of users who has even launched

a few paid attempts but looking at their

latest statement 86% of their revenues

last year still came from Google simply

paying them to be the default search

engine in Firefox Google is not only

milla's biggest competitor with chrome

but they also just lost a massive

Anti-Trust lawsuit in the United States

which might force them to stop paying

for default search engine placement in

for example competing browsers like

Mozilla that decision hasn't been made

yet but either way this is a Dangerously

unsustainable business model and

similarly signal is a free app and is

funded almost completely by donations

from regular users including me and

while they have been able to collect a

significant amount it doesn't actually

seem to be quite enough to offset their

costs and the president of signal even

claims that their expenses might reach

about $50 million next year the Gap in

funding for now is plugged by zero

interest rate loans from Rich

philanthropists like the WhatsApp

founder Brian Acton which I guess is

nice but it again raises the question of

sustainability what if the

philanthropists decide that they don't

want to fund it any further what if the

service grows can fold and suddenly have

massive costs who knows compared to

these proton having a simple sustainable

business model that works and has worked

for a decade is pretty unique especially

in the open source world where things

are often expected to be free it allows

proton to comfortably remain independent

long term proton is a private company

that doesn't have to reveal its finances

but based on the fact that they haven't

taken any massive Investments externally

this means that by definition there's a

state able financially and my rough

estimate based on you know this is just

a guess based on their numbers is that

they probably make something like1 to

$200 million a year that's obviously not

even remotely on the scale of like a

Google for example but it's also not bad

and also if we're right about the fact

that they doubled their business in the

last 3 years sounds pretty good now

after my three major highlights I also

wanted to mention two areas where I

think proton is not quite perfect then

the first one is its ownership structure

see companies like Mozilla and Signal

are Own 100% by a nonprofit Foundation

as a parent this ensures full adherence

to the mission long term and recently

proton have put out a block post

announcing that they to have established

a proton foundation with a similar goal

so that's a good thing but since I'm

nitpicking here I think the details of

the proton deal are not quite as clear

as they should be they do say that the

foundation was gifted enough shares by

three of its co-founders and early

employees to become quote the largest

voting shareholder of proton now I

understand not going to 100% for example

as it allows for for key employees to be

given shares and to be incentivized that

way but they didn't actually see how

much the foundation has the largest

shareholder could have anything 10% 50%

90% we just don't know I've checked the

Swiss company registry which is where

proton is headquartered but I couldn't

find any information about the ownership

split there either they explicitly

claimed that the foundation is legally

obligated to ensuring permanent

adherence to the mission of proton but

without the ownership Stakes we don't

actually know what powers it has to to

do this the only explicit power that

they mentioned is that they can block

hostile takeovers so I guess it has a

veto right but no other mechanisms were

given I did actually ask proton for a

comment and they gave me this as a

response which you can pause and read if

you like anyway I don't think this is a

Smoking Gun like a private company does

not have to declare its exact

shareholder structure to Outsiders but I

do think that for a company that really

wants its users to trust it and they

want as far as to create a foundation

for that to create user trust I think

even more transparency would be useful

and meanwhile the second complaint which

hardcore privacy enthusiasts sometimes

bring up is that proton officially

complies with legal warrants from Swiss

authorities this has led to some

unfortunate cases in the past like a

French activist being exposed by proton

handing over their IP addresses to the

authorities for example proton claims

that they had to comply by law as any

Swiss company would have and that the

only things that they could share was

metadata not the actual contents of

emails for example which of course were

encrypted I do think there's a debate to

be had about how much comp should comply

with legal requests but honestly I'll

leave that debate to people who know

more about the law than I do the only

thing that I can say is that for my

threat model this feels okay in the

grand scheme of things I think the solid

privacy features combined with the easy

to ouse apps the powerful ecosystem and

the sustainable business model do add up

to a combination that I think make

proton a uniquely impressive company now

whether it's at proton or some other

tech company I think being one of the

people who gets to build systems like

this is a really cool job and if you

want to learn how to be one of those

people yourself then check out brilliant

brilliant is an online learning platform

built specifically to teach people stem

skills this includes not just computer

science topics but also those around

maths physics engineering and more so

you can get a complete picture and to

learn to think like an engineer or a

scientist this includes courses like

thinking in code which helps you build

solid foundations for software

development or creative coding which

takes Concepts further with variables

and Loops while courses like applied

python focus on more specific use cases

tied to a programming language the

specialy of brilliant is that all of

their courses are designed from the

ground up with interactivity in mind so

they break complicated topics into

smaller chunks which you can then

practice right away not only is this

proven to be way more effective at

making you actually remember what you've

just learned it is also just

significantly more fun than passively

consuming information so you're more

likely to stick with it to try

everything that brilliant has to offer

for free for a full 30 days visit

brilliant.org Tech alar or click on the

link in the description you'll also get

20% off your annual premium subscription

if you choose to to get one so happy

learning and I'll see you next Friday

[Music]