Comment by AuthAuth
2 months ago
I'm kind of annoyed they've been secretly wasting their time and money on building an AI assistant. Proton Drive still doesnt have a linux app. Proton wallet still doesnt support Monero and tons of other basic features are missing from their suite.
Agreed. I was hoping for Proton Business to be a Google Workspace replacement (to get away from AI), and besides Proton Mail and Proton Pass, it's not even comparable. Drive is slow and docs is a half-assed implementation. They should stick to implementing core services and features such as Drive, Docs, Sheets, etc. before they go after AI cash grabs.
I don't like Proton but don't see how you can blame them on this: ChatGPT is now the 5th-most visited website on the Internet, there's a huge market demand.
Mainly I don't think Proton is serious competitor here. I'm not sure there is much of a market demand for mediocre white labelled LLMs priced at a premium. I can see it carving a bit of a niche with privacy-focused customers already in their ecosystem, but I don't see this taking off for them.
I echo the parent comment. I'm really on a Proton user for email and VPN. The quality drops off rather quickly after that. Calendar, Drive, Pass, and Wallet are all adequate at best; their primary selling point is not being Google rather than being particularly well built or supported. I would rather see them focus on being a truly competitive ecosystem.
I'm also not terribly impressed at the way they've positioned Lumo as a separate service from the existing Scribe AI features, and so conveniently not part of Ultimate plans.
Most people would also not believe there's much of a market for mediocre email priced at a premium. But it turns out if you market the privacy angle, there is.
I really want a source for your ChatGPT claim
Not GOP but probably this Wikipedia article [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-visited_websites
There's huge demand, for sure.
But there's also huge competition. You're not going to out-spend Google or Facebook or Apple or OpenAI or Baidu or Alibaba easily. And the likes of Google may have been caught napping a few years ago, but they've since woken up.
Still, I guess it's probably good for attracting investors, regardless of long-term profitability.
You don't need to outspend them or capture a huge percentage of the market. It's not a win-or-lose situation: there's a small-to-medium market for open-source model wrappers with a privacy angle, and you can make some money from it.
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I'm a seasoned Proton user, but they've lacked the remaining 15 % of features, that actually makes their products useful at scale.
I'm currently transitioning back to Google Workspace, unfortunately.
I also wonder why so many companies waste time and resources into AI apps now that they will either drag with them for years with a minimal user base or stop developing it all together. It's sounds so wasteful for their resources
Standard notes progress has been lackluster as well
Standard Notes is a "finished" product imo, but it's not integrated into the Proton ecosystem in any way.
This right here. I haven't seen any progress on it since they purchased it really
The people who made this app are not the ones involved in the traditional app suite .