Google is an advertising business, so the “need” for our data is built into their business model. Proton is not an advertising company and doesn’t have any relation with any other party where our data drives their business. If you are concerned that Proton will record your IP when you create an account (which they are very clear on in their privacy policy), you are pretty much looking for anonymity if even you claim not.

Tell me you don’t understand the difference between privacy and anonymity without telling me

Not fully correct. Mails between Proton users are E2E encrypted where Proton cannot see them, and rest of the emails are encrypted at rest once Proton receives them. Based on the audits and open source code, Proton is not keeping a copy of those emails when it receives them, and once they are encrypted, nobody but you will have access to it

You were being mislead with false information. Share appropriate sources to back up whatever you are saying. Proton has regular audits for security and encryption for all their products, which makes whatever you’ve been told pretty much false information