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Proton buying SimpleLogin is not a big corporation buying a small business. It's more like a barely-medium business buying an itsy-bitsy-tiny business. I think it's a good match.
They're both open source, they both have similar missions, they both have similar business models, they both have similar approaches and cultures.
Proton didn't HAVE to buy SimpleLogin. They could have easily forked the project or borrowed heavily from it (again, it's fully open source and sitting on Github for anyone to look at, and SimpleLogin even has instructions of how to self-host it).
If anything, it's going to be good for SimpleLogin customers that will get the benefit of Proton's experience in security and infrastructure (and auditing), plus an injection of extra resources, and all the SimpleLogin customers will no doubt be offered nice deals to sign up for ProtonMail.
Likewise, Proton customers will benefit from the integrations that are inevitably going to come, and it it will most likely be a win-win.
The people who will see a downside are people who already dislike Proton for whatever reason. I know there are some skeptics and people who don't trust Proton. However, is SimpleLogin under Proton's ownership LESS trustworthy than SimpleLogin all by itself, on its own? It's already working on bugfixes based on an audit they just had -- so I'd argue that SimpleLogin is net positive for the extra scrutiny they'll be getting in the future. I'd consider them MORE trustworthy now. Just to go through a buyout process like this, don't you think Proton had to look closely at SimpleLogin and its main developer (Son Nguyen Kim)? He was probably background checked and scrutinized with a microscope. So really, I don't see a downside unless you really, really, really dislike Proton.
Anyway, I like the arrangement enough so I upgraded to a premium account. Cross fingers. I think SimpleLogin has a good future. At least the next few years. Just use custom domains, and if they mess it up, then you can always migrate elsewhere.
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