Proton Docs seems a lot like Google Docs: white pages, formatting toolbar on the prime, dwell indicators displaying who’s within the doc with their title hooked up to a cursor, the entire deal. That’s not particularly shocking, for a few causes. First, Google Docs is massively widespread, and there are solely so some ways to fashion a doc editor anyway. Second, Proton Docs exists largely to be all of the issues which can be nice about Google Docs — simply with out Google within the combine.
Docs is launching immediately inside Proton Drive, as the newest app in Proton’s privacy-focused suite of labor instruments. The corporate that began as an electronic mail consumer now additionally features a calendar, a file storage system, a password supervisor, and extra. Including Docs to the ecosystem is sensible for Proton because it tries to compete with Microsoft Workplace and Google Workspace and gave the impression to be clearly coming quickly after Proton acquired Commonplace Notes in April. Commonplace Notes isn’t going away, although, Proton PR supervisor Will Moore tells me — it’s simply that Docs is borrowing some options.
The primary model of Proton Docs appears to have most of what you’d anticipate in a doc editor: wealthy textual content choices, real-time collaborative modifying, and multimedia assist. (If Proton can deal with picture embeds higher than Google, it might need successful on its arms only for that.) It’s web-only and desktop-optimized for now, although Moore tells me it’ll finally come to different platforms. “The whole lot that Google’s bought is on our roadmap,” he says.
Since it is a Proton product, safety is all the things: the corporate says each doc, keystroke, and even cursor motion is end-to-end encrypted in actual time. Proton has lengthy promised to by no means promote or in any other case use your person knowledge, which can attraction to extra individuals than ever now that there are such a lot of questions on how your paperwork and knowledge are used to coach AI fashions. (For what it’s value, Google says it additionally doesn’t use your content material to coach its fashions.)
Proton is simply one of many firms making an attempt to supply privacy-focused options to Google and Microsoft, and to date, none of them have made a dent in these firms’ dominance. However Proton’s merchandise have improved lots in the previous couple of years, and it’s getting nearer to providing all of the issues some customers may want to modify. (One large factor lacking? Spreadsheets. Good luck taking Excel down, Proton.)
