Big supporter of this idea!
I am at the beginning of my journey into digital privacy and it has been really time consuming learning what things I need to do, change or introduce, and who I can trust for that advice.
For people who want to ‘de-Google’ and switch to privacy respecting apps and services, Proton’s suite is a good move for those who are used to using a single ecosystem (and have a low threat model).
Like me, anyone actively looking for smartphone privacy will soon come across the raving reviews of Proton’s services, such as end-to-end encrypted emails, their free yet trustworthy VPN, etc. I therefore have to wonder what benefit there is in such a partnership, when anyone can go and start using Proton’s services right now. Or is what you are proposing is Proton offers a white label service by allowing Nothing to re-skin their apps? That’d be great for the people who crave Nothing-style apps.
Privacy abuse is becoming more common knowledge and I think AI might start to push people over the edge. I’m not saying robots are going to begin taking over the world, but I do think manufacturers/governments are introducing AI for improved online fingerprinting and outright spying on people. Therefore, any smartphone manufacturers that focus on maintaining privacy will be hugely appealing to me.
How about looking at what GrapheneOS is doing and bringing some (or all!) of its features to the mainstream? For example, put all the Google apps in a sandbox (so they cannot communicate with other apps on the phone) and make them deletable. Most people won’t want the inconvenience of giving up Google Maps, but for some of their services there are better alternatives (such as Brave’s browser and search engine) that also help to reduce the amount of data Google collects.
@hrry, did you try any other services such as Tutamail before settling upon Proton? What is it you like about them? I’m looking for honest opinions before fixing.
