Proton Mail is making it easier to say goodbye to Gmail

This is less a product gimmick than a funnel-defense move: Proton is lowering the switching cost for users who already have Gmail gravity but are increasingly privacy-curious. The second-order effect is not immediate Gmail share loss, but a longer-duration increase in “dual-inbox” behavior, which weakens Google’s hold on the most valuable users first — the ones with the highest willingness to pay for privacy, lower ad tolerance, and stronger word-of-mouth influence.

For GOOGL, the direct revenue hit is negligible in the near term, but the strategic risk is that Gmail’s role as a default identity layer becomes more contestable over a 12-24 month horizon. If migration tools become frictionless across privacy-focused mail apps, Google’s advantage shifts from product quality to ecosystem inertia, and that is easier to erode at the margin than most expect. The bigger issue is data: even a small migration of power users can reduce signal quality in adjacent ad and identity products, which is a slow-burn negative rather than a headline risk.

The market is likely underpricing how often “good enough” replacement tools change behavior when they are bundled with trust narratives. This is not a mass-market churn catalyst today; it is a niche wedge that can compound if regulators, enterprise IT, or consumer sentiment around tracking worsens. The reversal case is straightforward: if Google responds with materially better privacy controls or a more elegant import/migration experience, the competitive threat fades quickly.

Contrarian view: the move may be overread as a Gmail competitive threat when it is really a conversion aid for a small, privacy-sensitive cohort. That said, the existence of this feature is itself evidence that email is becoming more interoperable and less sticky, which is mildly negative for platform moats over time.