Giving up Gmail isn’t easy. Even if you’re concerned about privacy, chances are your email address is tied to dozens of online accounts, subscriptions, and smartphone contacts, carefully curated over the years.
That’s precisely the problem that Proton is trying to solve with a new feature that lets users send and receive Gmail messages directly within Proton Mail.
The privacy-focused email provider has expanded its Easy Switch migration tool to support full Gmail connectivity. The biggest change is that users can now send emails from their Gmail address directly inside Proton Mail – something that previously wasn’t possible. Until now, Gmail integration was mostly limited to importing messages.
The idea is to make moving away from Google’s ecosystem a little less painful. Rather than forcing users to abandon a long-established Gmail account overnight, Proton is positioning the feature as a stepping stone that allows people to gradually update important accounts, contacts, and services to a Proton Mail address over time.
Once connected, recent Gmail messages are imported into Proton Mail, while new emails sent to a Gmail address continue to arrive automatically in the Proton inbox. Users can also reply and send messages using their Gmail address directly from within Proton Mail, meaning there’s no need to switch back and forth between Google’s services and Proton’s own app.
Proton says that the arrangement brings some privacy benefits even if you’re still using Gmail. According to the company, Gmail activity viewed through Proton Mail isn’t used for advertising profiles, while Proton says it removes email trackers, filters spam, and blocks advertising elements that may appear within messages.
The company is also keen to highlight what doesn’t happen – connecting a Gmail account to Proton Mail doesn’t give Google access to a user’s Proton inbox. That doesn’t mean Gmail suddenly becomes fully private, mind. Proton openly acknowledges that Google can still access emails received by a Gmail account.
Instead, the company describes the feature as a transition tool rather than a permanent solution, encouraging users to eventually move important services over to a Proton address and phase Gmail out entirely.
There’s another potential benefit for privacy-conscious users, too. Proton says that if both people in a conversation are using Proton Mail, messages exchanged between connected Gmail accounts can be protected with end-to-end encryption, preventing Google from reading the contents of those emails.
The feature is rolling out gradually, so not all Proton users will see it immediately. It also joins existing migration tools that already support importing email from Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple Mail, along with the ability to move files from Google Drive and Google Photos into Proton’s own services.
The update arrives as some users continue to look beyond Google’s ecosystem amid concerns around privacy, data collection, and the broader direction of major techn platforms. Whether it convinces people to leave Gmail entirely remains to be seen, but Proton is clearly betting that making the transition easier is half the battle.
Read the full article here
