The Grump

Okay, I was not aware of that, thanks for letting me know about it. I’m using Lumo semi-regularly and it’s often giving me false or outdated information (even when it’s doing searches online). But I think my issues with Lumo might be because I’m often doing prompts and searches in Finnish, and Lumo seems to struggle with it (it’s Finnish output has horrible typos and grammatical errors). Maybe the English version performs better overall?

Horrible stuff. I’ve been using Proton since 2020 and back then Proton’s thing was just an encrypted email service. Year after year, they’ve started adding all these other apps and services to Proton’s platform, and some of them fits nicely with the core email service (calendar, cloud for files, VPN). But lately they’ve began adding apps and services such as AI LLM chat (which is pretty crappy and inaccurate), remote video meeting software (which is really barebones feature wise) and apparently now they are working on Chromium based “privacy” browser (as if we don’t have enough browsers already, let alone Chromium based). All of this requires a lot more developers and takes more time to develop and maintain, which is probably why Andy is so keen on making progress faster by using AI.

But why does Proton need to add all of these apps? To fight big tech in all fronts? To create same kind of ultra loyal, “will buy anything” fanboy culture around Proton products like Apple has (and to lesser extent Google has)? Or is it to grow bigger company much faster than originally intended (because the investors want that) all the while taking bigger financial risks in doing so?

In any case, Andy needs to step down as the CEO. The next CEO needs to take a good hard look at what’s relevant to their customers. I don’t think anyone is asking for a vibe-coded Proton web browser, just because it’s “Proton”.

Google may have already disrupted Microsoft’s dominance somewhat. At least here in Finland a lot of businesses prefer to use Google Workspace rather than Office365 - everybody also seem to think that Google’s solution is far superior usability and performance wise compared to the Office and the sluggish mess that is Microsoft Teams. It also doesn’t hurt that Google is also offering free tier Workspace; few of the hobby groups I’m part of have chosen Workspace for file storage, remote meetings etc., without any discussion on what solution to use. It seems as if Google Workspace is now the default solution the same way MS Office was in the early 2000’s. But these are just my observations and are also limited to Finland (and a little bit to Estonia) so the situation and attitudes might be really different elsewhere.

Obviously Google’s Workspace being “free” means you, the user, are the product. But I also think that Google’s Workspace has probably demonstrated to the masses that there are alternatives to MS Office, and that MS Word is not the only text editing software in existence and that you don’t need Excel to work with spreadsheets. Maybe in 5 to 10 years LibreOffice, Euro Office and similar solutions have gained much more ground as people seem to be more aware of FOSS solutions and their benefits in general, especially in Europe where companies and public offices are pulling out from the US tech anyway.