91–100 of 593 posts
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If quality of competition truly mattered, then IE wouldn't have had to be stopped with legislation
IE wasn’t stopped with legislation. It continued to be bundled with Windows. It was eventually dethroned by Chrome.
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You don’t think Google will push Chrome to iOS users with banners when they search, use YouTube, Gmail, etc? That’s what they did on desktop.
Yes, but again why would that suddenly mean 90% of people use it vs the reality of desktop today where they don't own 90% of the market? Why are 9 out of 10 people suddenly jumping ship because Google pushed chrome on their phone vs on their desktop PC?
Apple claiming security as a reason for monopoly, how classic. The EU's digital markets act bans the only Safari lock on IOS, so this is gone whether apple likes it or not. (1 - sorry couldn't find a better source) Safari is the new IE, there is a difference between a monopoly while still being able to use a competing product (like chrome in other platfroms), and forcing Safari(WebKit) while hindering the web because…
Also many have now spoken up against it:
### Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) Apple’s restrictions on third-party browsers, and the limitations it puts on Safari/WebKit (its own browser tools) have hobbled “web apps,” which run seamlessly inside a browser. This means that app makers can’t deliver a single, browser-based app that works on all tablets and phones - they have to pay to develop separate apps for each mobile platform.
That also means that app users can’t just switch from one platform to another and access all their apps by typing a URL into a browser of their choice.
### Mozilla Mozilla believes that major platforms should be under an on-going duty to:
Stop practices that distort competition on the merits and inhibit consumer choice, such as: ● interfering with consumer selection of alternative browsers and use of those browsers to access the internet from links and queries on their devices; and ● dictating or controlling browser components, such as browser engines, which prevent consumers from accessing and using their preferred browser across all operating systems and devices.
### Google By contrast, PWAs—and the web writ-large—receive a small fraction of this support on iOS. This is primarily because of Apple’s requirement that all browsers use its proprietary WebKit browser engine. Not only does this prevent browsers from differentiating from Safari—Chrome is unable to access the user’s camera, preventing users from using products like Google Lens—it also harms user security. A recent study from Google’s Project Zero security research team found that WebKit is significantly slower than other browser engines to fix reported bugs.
### Microsoft Apple requires that any mobile browsers on iOS, including those offered by Apple’s competitors (e.g., Google’s Chrome app), use Apple’s own WebKit browser engine. This restriction harms competition and consumers.
### Meta Apple requires all web browsers on iOS to use WebKit, a degraded version of Apple’s Safari browser, to render web pages. Apple thus sets Safari as a functionality ceiling for mobile browsers on iOS. The restrictions on Safari’s and other iOS web browsers’ capabilities prevent web pages and web apps from providing consumers with robust, cross-platform experiences that would lower switching barriers
### Telegram We suspect that Apple may be intentionally crippling its web apps to force its users to download more native apps where Apple is able to charge its 30% commission
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It may be 60% on MacOS but that’s a very tiny market. Overall Chrome is quite dominant. Numbers I found say on desktop Chrome is at 70%. Include the 7.75% for Edge (because it’s basically Chrome) and that’s almost 80%. FF at least exists and is similar to Safari. On mobile it’s at 65%. Safari is the only other browser above 5%. Chrome is dangerously close to total monopoly.
The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. What matters is that macOS is very similar to iOS in that it is owned by Apple, Safari is available on it, and comes pre-installed. The only difference is that on macOS browser competition is not banned by Apple. Yet, Safari still has around 60% market share on macOS. So there is a good chance that even if competition where allowed on iOS, Safari…
I disagree. There are already plenty of sites that are broken on macOS Safari because it's a niche platform. The only saving grace is that websites still have to support iOS Safari. If vendors were able to say "we only support Chrome" on iOS as well, I think that 60% macOS Safari marketshare would drop rapidly due to necessity.
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It's not Apple's choice to make on whether or not Chrome becomes a browser monopoly - fighting anti-competitiveness with anti-competitiveness is not a solution. The chips will fall as they will and we will all be left to deal with the aftermath. That's the way it has to be.
> The chips will fall as they will and we will all be left to deal with the aftermath The aftermath could be the complete death of the open web. Unwinding that may be nearly impossible. There needs to be a plan in place before Pandora’s box is opened.
Short term, it's decidedly not good, but long term? How can we know?
If the approach is so inherently flawed that this result is an inevitability, maybe it deserves to die and be replaced by something else.
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No; my problem is when people are using the "open web" as a bludgeon to get Apple to allow Chrome on iOS. If you want Chrome on iOS, just say that. To pretend that there is open future of browser diversity once Chrome is allowed on iOS is underhanded.
OP here. That's actually incorrect. We started OWA with a group of primarily Safari first developers, in that iOS Safari is our primary target platform. We've had over a decade of major issues from rendering bugs, to lack of functionality to our apps breaking for months at a time waiting for a patch. The severe underfunding of Safari/webkit coupled with a ban on competition meant that it was never going to be viable…
Yes, opening browser engines would be good for the competition. But you missed one point: You assume all players will play fair in the competition. If all browser engines would be allowed over night, what would happen: Google will probably play really unfair. E.g. sadly the layout of Google will be messed up in Safari, youtube videos stutter/have lower resolution, everything is a lot slower, the performance will be sabotaged, but on Chrome everything will be working fine. There was even a precedent for something similar: [1]
This will probably come alongside with "Try it in Google Chrome", a lot of users would probably switch, thus the monopoly of Chromium would be unstoppable by pure market forces.
Yes, having only one browser engine is bad for the choice of the user, but it does have significant downsides.
Damned, if you do, damned if you don't
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/4/18529381/google-youtube-in...
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If quality of competition truly mattered, then IE wouldn't have had to be stopped with legislation
IE wasn’t stopped with legislation. It continued to be bundled with Windows. It was eventually dethroned by Chrome.
Yes it was. You're ignoring all the other things proprietary about IE and only considering the OS bundle one. JScript, VBScript, and ActiveX were the real problem. There we so many proprietary extensions to IE that were not even remotely supported elsewhere. Hell, C# even came out of the hell that was Microsoft's JVM, J++, and J# thanks to those trials
I don't really understand why the walled garden seems to still surprise so many people.
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It's not Apple's choice to make on whether or not Chrome becomes a browser monopoly - fighting anti-competitiveness with anti-competitiveness is not a solution. The chips will fall as they will and we will all be left to deal with the aftermath. That's the way it has to be.
But letting the chips fall where they may is what led to the current situation, with a browser market heavily distorted and made anti-competitive by two tech giants. What people are asking for is a regulator that steps in and redresses the imbalances so a healthy browser market can arise. If the regulator does not step in they are choosing the status quo which by itself also is a deliberate choice. Inaction is always…
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Safari still has around 60% on MacoS and all the normal users believe that there is browser competition now. At best it's speculation, but we can compare that to the very real harms of Apple's browser ban. We've written about the harms in detail here: https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20Bringing%20Com...
It may be 60% on MacOS but that’s a very tiny market. Overall Chrome is quite dominant. Numbers I found say on desktop Chrome is at 70%. Include the 7.75% for Edge (because it’s basically Chrome) and that’s almost 80%. FF at least exists and is similar to Safari. On mobile it’s at 65%. Safari is the only other browser above 5%. Chrome is dangerously close to total monopoly.