Proton Launches Google Docs Alternative

Don’t want to share your text documents with Google? Proton is launching its own text editor that looks exactly like Google Docs.

Proton is expanding its ecosystem of privacy-friendly web tools with the documentsan online word processor. Just like in Google Docs or the web version of Word, you can share documents with colleagues and work on them together in real time. The word processor is available for free to those with a Proton Drive account.

The similarities to Google Docs aren’t far-fetched, and it’s not entirely unconscious. Most of Proton’s solutions are almost identical in appearance and function to their Google counterparts. Proton’s main selling point is that its technology is not owned by Google, or any other major commercial technology company.

Swiss banking secrecy

The downside to using Google Docs or Microsoft 365 is that by definition you are also sharing your documents with the platform owner. So they know exactly what is in your documents. US companies are also subject to laws that allow the US government to access user data if it deems it necessary, including users outside the US.

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You don’t get any of that with Proton. Proton is a Swiss company and is bound by Swiss banking secrecy. The company states in black and white that it never has access to the contents of users’ files, not even to the metadata. Proton puts your documents in a vault that is stored with end-to-end encryption.

Proton Docs is part of Proton Drive, the alternative to Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. The Proton offering also includes a mail app with calendar, a VPN, and a password manager, all of which meet the same privacy and security requirements.