Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.
It’s an early sign that Europe’s competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely.
It’s good news but the true test will be on if those users are retained. It’s possible the uptick is just a case of iPhone users seeing a new screen they’ve never seen before and trying the browsers out of curiosity.
Which would definitely be a good thing. Anything that gets the average user to even consider the wild notion of trying something other than the default would be a monumental improvement to the entire tech market.
But I still think the actual numbers on new active users will probably not be as high. Higher, yes, but not a monumental shift. Anything is an improvement, though.
I think it’s also possible this is more likely to happen in EU countries than the US. It really feels like European users are generally more willing to use alternative things.
On macbooks Safari is excellent for battery life. Absolutely blows every other browser out the water. If the same optimisation has been done on mobile, then people will go back for that alone. Safari has less add-ons and a less intuitive interface (if your not accustomed to Mac) but the longer battery life makes up for the inadequacy.
Have they actually made non-Webkit versions though, or is it still just WKWebView? A part of me thinks Apple has already kind of won this. They started allowing plugins and such a while ago, and at this point it covers my needs. Safari is really well-designed for phones as well, and the times I’ve tried using Firefox it just feels awkward and clunky - not because of the engine, but because of the general UX.
I’m sure opinions differ, and I really do hope more people will swap over to Firefox (Brave and Vivaldi can fuck themselves), but it doesn’t really feel like a big win unless you get more tangible benefits; different engines, plugin support, etc.
There have been rumors that Apple would open it up for iOS, but I wasn’t sure if they still require Webkit, so I looked it up.
Apparently, in the EU, they can use their own tools as of 17.4 (which just released) but I guess US still uses WebKit.
Yeah, I’m in the EU so it’s been decently big news here. That said I’m having a hard time believing that they’d make separate versions of their browsers for the EU and then the rest of the world. That’s a lot of work for a potentially very small market.
Um what did Vivaldi do wrong? Is it just cause it’s Chromium?
Yeah, it’s just because it’s Chromium. I don’t know anything about the company so I don’t have any opinion there.
I used to be of the opinion that it’d be nice if the web unified under one platform. Honestly, I still hold that opinion, but the caveat there would obviously be that no single company should control that platform. Google does control Chromium. All Chromium based browsers will see Manifest V3, and that’s just one thing. Google can do more or less what they wish, and the rest of the web will just kind of have to take it.
They’re in a similar position that Microsoft was in back when Internet Explorer was an actually good browser, but unlike Microsoft I don’t think Google will rest on their laurels. It’s really worrying to me that Google essentially owns the internet.
2021: “The rendering engine doesn’t matter that much because everyone ends up seeing the same internet”
2022: “How much can google really do with a monopoly on the back end?”
2023: “They still don’t control the underlying structure of the internet.”
2024: “well shit.”
I was foolishly hoping that there’d be some sort of regulation where Chromium ended up being democratised. Fools hope, pipe dream, whatever. It obviously won’t happen because I don’t think the powers that be quite realise how dangerous it is; it’s too technical for them to grasp.
an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely
More like “an outcome that denialists deemed unlikely”.
Skeptics actually think things through and draw conclusions about likely outcomes based on actual real reasons, hence might very well conclude a claim that something will work if all indications point towards that. It’s not about refusing to believe a positive outcome, it’s about checking the logic behind the argument being made, and not just for positive outcomes, also for negative ones.
Denialists simply refuse to admit something can or did happen or work as intended, no reasons necessary.
It’s highly unlikely that a real skeptic will conclude that people having freedom to choose in a user friendly way when previously they had no user friendly choice at all, will not enhance competition, whilst a denialist will just claim “it won’t” work with no actual logical reason backing that conclusion.
