This is very disappointing, I've been on Proton for a long time and just assumed a "high trust non-Google" email provider implicitly had integrity. Knowing that they're scummy almost defeats the purpose of using it for me.
If there was an inflection point to break that perception — like covid gave a pause for thought for location based ad targeting — and hence the incentive, perhaps we can kick email as one of the ideas whose time has come.
I am rooting for ATproto to be the replacement.
It can, but it depends on how "googled" you allowed yourself to become in the first place. For me, that's not much at all. But if you've been all-in (or near it) for years, with tons of docs, your photo archive, etc. all tied to google, then yeah, moving away is gonna be difficult.