Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio

Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio | TechCrunch

Proton said the Standard Notes app, which is available for both mobile and desktop, will remain “open source, freely available and fully supported”.
It also suggested that there will be no change to Standard Notes’ prices; its press release specifies that existing five-year subscriptions “will continue to be honored.”
“Standard Notes will remain an independent product and in due course both companies will open access to their products to each others’ users,” Proton added.

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dvdnet62 @feddit.nl

1y ago

Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio

techcrunch.com /2024/04/10/proton-standard-notes/

22 comments

A "privacy" company acquiring and centralizing various projects to be under its umbrella seems kind of worrisome to me even if it's done with pure intentions.
- I find that fair, but at the same time, proton has a rocksolid history at this point. OFC they will likely add their features to it, and maybe remove some. But im the end its still open source and under gpl licence, so its not like proton cam change that unless they remove all other commits.
  
  Chromium is still open source, as is Android to some extent. I get that the two companies (Google and Proton) are in completely different size classes, but something being open source doesn't necessarily mean it stays healthy. Sure people can fork it, but the issue tends to lie in continuous maintenance by volunteers against continuous maintenance by a large company that's constantly adding in anti-features along with desired ones.
  I'm not necessarily saying Proton will go down that route, but trying to become big and bundled as a value proposition opens the door for that behavior once they get enough people locked into the ecosystem.
- Even from the "all your eggs in one basket" kind of perspective it does feel worrisome, not to mention that i am unsure about this dilution of their focus on many apps being helpful, I'd rather have them focus on very few but rock solid and maintained services instead of going with the Google "we do everything" way to do things
  
  The phrase Jack of all trades master of none really only applies to people. A company can just hire more people when it has more products.
  Google's issue is not that they're "big" it's that they've failed to truly innovate and invest in anything in years. The current leadership kills anything that isn't an instant money maker despite the majority of the company's profitable products taking years to become profitable. They're also in a weird spot because their "magic" was always free services in exchange for advertising money and that's a model that's come under attack and been replicated to death by competitors.
So does this mean paying Proton Unlimited users will get access to StandardNotes too? I'd rather not have to dish out another subscription.
- Almost certainly.
That article was far more clear than their own. "Joining Forces" as they called it, could mean almost anything. But "Acquiring" Standard Notes to add to their services actually explains what's happening.
If it follows the SimpleLogin acquisition as they implied, it'll still be a separately branded product that's added to a Proton Ultimate subscription. So that's cool.
- "Standard Notes will remain an independent product and in due course both companies will open access to their products to each others’ users,” Proton added.
  Sounds like they plan to end up merging it all.
  
  It's a bit murkier, SimpleLogin remains an independent product that you can now login to with a proton account. They also added some of SimpleLogin's features into Proton.
  I wouldn't be surprised if they do a similar thing where you can login to standard notes itself with a Proton account but they also start integrating pieces of the app more closely into the Proton suite.
big privacy companies can fight stronger against big tech
- They can also lobby more effectively for privacy respecting legislation and privacy rights. I don't like lobbying, but so long as it's around, it would be nice to have a big privacy company that's as invested in that as the average privacy enthusiast.
Had not heard of this software, interesting...
Will need to see how it compares to Notion for class notes
- I used standard notes a little while ago, it seemed like a nice phone note app replacement with a decent number of markdown based plugins
  I don't think it's trying to be a Notion or an Obsidian
  
  Have not used Standard Notes yet. How does it compare to Obsidian?
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary In a press release announcing the move, Proton emphasized the pair’s “shared values,” including the use of E2EE; a commitment to open-source technology; and how neither has relied upon venture capital to drive growth.
This includes building on its first acquisition — email alias startup SimpleLogin, which it acquired in 2022 — as well as developing and launching fully fledged password manager app Proton Pass in June.
So the company is evidently not allergic to user acquisition and other consolidation-based growth opportunities where it sees enough philosophical overlap plus the chance to deepen its technical bank.
“The deal is a strategic decision designed to benefit users by bringing to market secure, easy to use, private products that anyone can access,” Proton wrote.
“Standard Notes and Proton engineers will begin working together immediately to ensure their combined skills and experience bear fruit for users as soon as possible.”
Asked about the sustainability of pro-privacy business models that don’t rely on exploitation of user data — when so much of mainstream tech still continues to roll in the opposite, data-mining direction — Yen emphasized the need for long-term thinking by privacy startups.
Saved 80% of original text. :::
Anyone taking bets on how long before we find out some shitty thing Proton is doing that completely undermines it's supposed privacy?

22 comments