Andy Yen, founder of Protonmail, recently spoke out about big tech companies like Apple and Google. He stated that their business models were not sustainable. “not good for users [and] not good for society.” The focus of Yen’s ire is surveillance capitalism, the business model of Silicon Valley giants like Facebook that turn the private lives of their users into information sold to the highest bidder.
The Independent reports that Proton chief Andy Yen has some choice words for tech giants Google, Facebook, and Apple. Yen founded Proton. Protonmail is an encrypted email client. ProtonVPN runs on Yen’s back. Yen said that Proton was founded by Yen, which runs the encrypted email client Protonmail and ProtonVPN. “surveillance capitalism”Model “wasn’t the reason that Tim [Berners-Lee] built the web.” Berners-Lee has sat on Proton’s advisory board since September 2021.
The term “surveillance capitalism” refers to the tech giants’ collection of user data to build profiles and provide better advertising information to third-party advertisers. These data collection methods have been used by Google and Facebook for a long time to dominate the online advertising space. Apple, however, has begun its Search Ads advertising business.
Proton recently announced its creation of an app ecosystem, with Proton Drive, and Proton Calendar. This is in attempt to compete against the Google and Apple cloud storage, and calendar services. Yen explained that Proton has been receiving requests from customers for additional features such as chat apps, online documents and password managers.
“To a large extent, products and services have kind of gone away”Yen stated. “There are three ecosystems, essentially: there’s Microsoft, there’s Google, there’s Apple. And Facebook, maybe, depending on who you ask. Privacy needs an ecosystem. You talk to most consumers around and you ask them: ‘Do you like Google’s vision of the web?’ Once they realize what it is, they’re terrified.”
However, Google’s app ecosystem is incredibly popular despite these worries, Google Search continues to hold a monopoly on the search engine market, and Google Chrome is the world’s most popular web browser. Yen says this is because there’s not enough competition.
“If you ask somebody if they want more privacy and security … everybody wants it,”Yen. “With the way that Android and iOS are setting all the default on devices – in a frankly anticompetitive way – in a mobile-first world … what else do you know?”
Read more at The Independent here.
Breitbart News reporter Lucas Nolan covers issues related to free speech, online censorship and other topics. Follow Lucas Nolan on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address [email protected]
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