
ProtonMail’s business model is designed in a manner that would go against the interest of ProtonMail’s business not to prioritize user privacy. So, realistically speaking, it would be irrational to expect Google to truly care about our privacy because it would go against its business model.Īnd this is the problem ProtonMail is trying to fix by building a foundationally privacy-conscious email service. However, ad empires like Google are built on the foundation of data. And the make matters worse user data collection also increases the risk of data breaches. Email conversations & usage behavior help build a users’ ad profile, including data from Google’s other properties like Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, etc. Google uses Gmail as a data collection factory. But while users don’t pay monetarily, they pay with something more precious that most of them would value higher than money: personal data. The average email user might be under the impression that Gmail is free. The answer to this puzzle lies in the lack of privacy users are subjected to when using Gmail. And if the switch wasn’t enough, many ProtonMail users also choose to pay to use the service. The small yet substantial rise in popularity of the relatively new ProtonMail begs the question of why anyone would switch from older services like Gmail, Outlook & Yahoo Mail to ProtonMail in the first place.

Despite this, more than 50 million people worldwide are now using a lesser-known email service called ProtonMail, which started in 2014.

And second, there’s no shortage of free email services - Gmail, Outlook & Yahoo Mail are popular examples. One reason why email usage is so widespread worldwide is that it is, for the most part, free.

And approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received every day worldwide. Around 4 billion people were using one or another email service in 2020.
