Link tags: competition

WP2 - The requirement for browsers operating on iOS devices to use Apple’s WebKit browser engine [PDF]

The Competition & Markets Authority brings receipts:

The requirement that all browsers on the iOS operating system use a specific version of the WebKit browser engine controlled by Apple, means that there is no competition between browser engines on the platform. Browser vendors cannot switch to an alternative browser engine or make changes to the version of WebKit used on iOS. Similarly, consumers are unable to switch to a browser based on an alternative browser engine. We consider that the lack of competitive pressure is likely to reduce Apple’s incentives to improve WebKit.

We Need To Rewild The Internet

Powerful metaphors in this piece by Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon on the Waldsterben of the internet:

Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within.

We all know this. We see it each time we reach for our phones. But what most people have missed is how this concentration reaches deep into the internet’s infrastructure — the pipes and protocols, cables and networks, search engines and browsers. These structures determine how we build and use the internet, now and in the future.

Apple backs off killing web apps, but the fight continues - Open Web Advocacy

Hallelujah! Apple have backed down on their petulant plan to sabatoge homescreen apps.

I’m very grateful to the Open Web Advocacy group for standing up to this bullying.

Home Screen Advantage - Infrequently Noted

This is exactly what it looks like: a single-fingered salute to the web and web developers.

Read Alex’s thorough explanation of the current situation and then sign this open letter.

Cupertino’s not just trying to vandalise PWAs and critical re-engagement features for Safari; it’s working to prevent any browser from ever offering them on iOS. If Apple succeeds in the next two weeks, it will cement a future in which the mobile web will never be permitted to grow beyond marketing pages for native apps.

Also, remember this and don’t fall for it:

Apple apparently hopes it can convince users to blame regulators for its own choices.

Manton Reece - Apple is twisting the truth

When it benefits Apple, they take the DMA requirements much further than intended. When it doesn’t benefit them, they lean back on the “integrity” of iOS and barely comply at all.

Apple on course to break all Web Apps in EU within 20 days - Open Web Advocacy

I don’t like to assume the worst and assign vindictitive motives to people, but what Apple is doing here is hard to read as anything other than petulant and nasty …and really, really bad for users.

If you’ve ever made a progressive web app, please fill in this survey.

Pluralistic: Tech workers and gig workers need each other (13 Jan 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Ever wondered why you’re always being encouraged to download the app?

But zero percent of app users have installed an ad-blocker, because they don’t exist, because you’d go to prison if you made one. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.

DEF CON 31 - An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Ensh*ttification - Cory Doctorow - YouTube

A great rousing—practical—speech from Cory.

Open Web Advocacy

A grassroots coalistion of web developers lobbying to get Apple to allow fair competition on iOS.

We have identified the #AppleBrowserBan as the number one threat to the future of the open web.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site  : Set Safari free!

If Apple allowed Safari to actually compete, it would be better for web developers, businesses, consumers, and for the health of the web. Come on, Apple, set Safari free!

iOS Browser Choice | CSS-Tricks

I have this expensive computer in my pocket and it feels unfair that it is hamstrung in this very specific way of not allowing other browser engines. I also have an Apple laptop and it’s not hamstrung in that way, and I really hope it never is.

Chrome is the new Safari. And so are Edge and Firefox. – Hello my name is Niels Leenheer

You may not realise that all browsers on iOS are required to use the same rendering engine as Safari. On other platforms, this is not the case.

A terrific in-depth look at the frustrating state of the web on iOS.

So it’s not just one browser that falls behind. It’s all browsers on iOS. The whole web on iOS falls behind. And iOS has become so important that the entire web platform is being held back as a result.

And this damning assessment is mercifully free of conspiracy theories.

The Safari and Chrome team both want to make the web safer and work hard to improve the web. But they do have different views on what the web should be.

Google is focussing on improving the web by making it more capable.

Safari seems to focus on improving the web as it currently is.

Read the whole thing—it’s excellent!

There can only be one proper solution: Apple needs to open up their App Store to browsers with other rendering engines. Scrap rule 2.5.6 and allow other browsers on iOS and let them genuinely compete. Even though Apple has been forced to compromise on some App Store rules, I have little hope for this to happen.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site  : Briefing to the UK Competition and Markets Authority on Apple’s iOS browser monopoly and Progressive Web Apps

Following on from Stuart’s, here’s Bruce’s presentation to the CMA on Apple’s monopolistic practices and hostility to progressive web apps.

as days pass by — Talking to the Competition and Markets Authority about Apple

What I would like is that I can give users the best experience on the web, on the best mobile hardware. That best mobile hardware is Apple’s, but at the moment if I want to choose Apple hardware I have to choose a sub-par web experience. Nobody can fix this other than Apple, and there are a bunch of approaches that they could take — they could make Safari be a best-in-class experience for the web, or they could allow other people to collaborate on making the browser best-in-class, or they could stop blocking other browsers from their hardware. People have lots of opinions about which of these, or what else, could and should be done about this; I think pretty much everyone thinks that something should be done about it, though.

Back to the Bad Old Days of the Web – Jorge Arango

We’ve enjoyed a relatively long period when we didn’t have to think about which browser to use. Alas, that period is ending: I must now keep Chrome running all the time, much like I needed that PC in the early 2000s.

What is the Value of Browser Diversity? - daverupert.com

I’ve thought about these questions for over a year and narrowed my feelings of browser diversity down to two major value propositions:

1. Browser diversity keeps the Web deliberately slow
2. Browser diversity fosters consensus and cooperation over corporate rule

Igalia Chats: Web Ecosystem Health with Jeremy Keith and Stuart Landridge

Myself and Stuart had a chat with Brian about browser engine diversity.

Here’s the audio file if you’d like to huffduff it.

Firefox’s fight for the future of the web | Technology | The Guardian

A good overview of the unfair playing field of web browsers, dominated by the monopolistic practices by Google and Apple.

Mozilla is no longer fighting for market share of its browser: it is fighting for the future of the web.

Browser diversity starts with us. | Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design

Hear, hear!

When one company decides which ideas are worth supporting and which aren’t, which access problems matter and which don’t, it stifles innovation, crushes competition, and opens the door to excluding people from digital experiences.

So how do we fight this? We, who are not powerful? We do it by doubling down on cross-browser testing. By baking it into the requirements on every project, large or small. By making sure our colleagues, bosses, and clients know what we’re doing and why.

Goodbye, EdgeHTML - The Mozilla Blog

Mozilla comes out with all guns blazing:

Microsoft is officially giving up on an independent shared platform for the internet. By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google.