The CRA, which is now in effect, lists browsers as class I important products. Technical documentation, design documentation, user documentation, security conformance testing, a declared support period at the time of download, software bill of materials, the legal obligation to respond to and make all your internal documents available to market surveillance organizations, etc.
And if the EU doesn’t publish harmonized development standards by 2027, you will be required to pay a 3rd party to come in and analyze you, your design, and the security of your browser, and make a report to send to the market surveillance organization, who gets to decide if you have the requisite conformance.
Are you sure that anyone but the big boys want to make a browser in the EU?
Here is the law, please point out where I am wrong. Much appreciated :)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L...
Yeah, I do. Guess which industry has seen negative productivity growth in the past 2 decades, even though the broader private sector grew by 50%?
https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20250712_WBC...
You sure you are ready to freeze all innovation forever? Cause there is a well documented inverse relationship between regulation and innovation. (Small teams cannot afford compliance officers and other such dross. Big ones do move fast, and, without competition from the smells, do not need to)
That doesn't make sense. Even the big browser makers have beta-versions clearly marked as experimental. If someone is so dumb that they don't understand simple warnings and disclaimers, that's their problem and nobody else's.
"Don't use if dumb" is the only warning that regulators need to require. The regulator should pay to the maker for all other compliance measures, otherwise regulations become only a source of oppressive power and picking winners and losers. "Only" because they do not increase software security in any meaningful way.
Personally I consider Chrome to be one of the least-safe browsers available, because it sends my data to Google. Also it perpetuates a monoculture. However, others may define "safe" differently, excluding such considerations.
Penalties:
• Up to €15 million or 2.5 % of global turnover for essential requirement failures.
• €10 million or 2 % turnover for other obligations.
• €5 million or 1 % turnover for misleading or incomplete documents
On the one hand, these are important standards. On the other, it seems impossible for small shops to adhere to a lot of this.
These tech giants are essentially extensions of the United State's government now and fining them or imposing restrictions isn't as simple as fining any corporation due to the geopolitics at play.
The long term solution is for EU to decouple its reliance on American technology. Anything else is a bandaid IMO.
The EU’s relatively shrinking GDP has much more to do with their populations growing older and their population size stabilizing, and the relatively tiny amount of migration, than EU digital laws, most of which have been replicated throughout the world.
Additionally, the EU has always had weak financial markets, and the only strong financial center, the city of London, quit the EU and both the EU and the city of London have suffered because of that, with a whole bunch of LSE listed companies moving to New York (including possibly Shell, which would be devastating for London as a financial center).
I'm not buying this argument. Same how the US's economy isn't stronger because Americans have more kids because we're not talking about agrarian civilizations here where every pair of hands on the farm ads proportional labor output. In service based economies, a smart person with a wealthy VC behind him can generate the GDP growth of tens of thousands of traditional labor jobs so population growth isn't the bottleneck.
EU economy is weak not because of lack of more kids, but because they have not captured any high growth industries (specifically tech) to generate better jobs and new wealth for future generations of youth. Europe is all old wealth and in the hands of old people. Once the economy becomes a fixed pie with no growth, population growth follows suit. EU economy is weak because after 2008 they went the route of austerity while the US printed it's way out dumping cheap money on fueling economic growth.
If Europeans would hypothetically start having way more kids tomorrow, those kids would end up being even poorer having to share the same fixed pie of limited economic resources. Another argument why more kids != wealthier for Europeans, is a news I read today of another local university graduate who moved his start-up to the US, so what's the point in making more kids if they have no funds to increase the GPD here and they leave? More kids with no comparable growth in money = those kids competing with India or Bangladesh.
Question: Europe has had an open door migration policy since at least 2015 and taken millions of migrants, especially Italy and Greece. Why haven't all those migrants turned EU's or Italy or Greece's economies into a powerhouse and built US big-tech competitors here? Same question for Canada. When is that magic economic growth from population growth coming?
Answer: Because US invests more money in high growth sectors than EU and Canada combined, and because people aren't fungible cogs in a machine, that you can swap in and out and get the same economic output it's agrarian labor. Attracting the handful of the smartest people in the world with money and resources like the US did, is more important and ads more value to their economy than attracting millions of desperate unskilled laborers like EU and Canada did.
>but without people to pay for them
Yes, people to pay for them, as in billionaire VCs pay for them, not millions of poor uneducated people, those can't even pay their rent without government support let alone boost economy. They aren't gonna boost anything except Amazon fulfillment center and Door dash delivery rates.
So NO, I don't agree with you at all. EU has enough local skilled college educated people since university is free here, but it has no VC money to amplify their labor into economic output as proven how many EU's top minds choose to work for US companies. Adding even more random people to a stagnating economy just means lower wages and bargaining power with higher rents, not more wealth growth per capita. Your comment does not disprove any of this.
Like which example are you referring to? Be specific. Because you haven't provided any reproducible arguments or specific facts to support your opinion, and I gave you a real life example that disproves your hypothetical one.
>I am not an expert on Europe
You don't need to be one to argue on this, if you have other arguments that can be substantiated with proof or facts to disprove mine.
>I would like to say, though, that starting with a conclusion and working backwards from it is a really terrible way to proceed with a hypothesis.
I'm not starting from the conclusion, I just picked the best real life example at my disposal that contradicts your point and chose to narrate it from that end, but it doesn't change the start condition or the outcome, it's still the same no mater from which way you look at it.
Your first paragraph, specifically.
> Same how the US's economy isn't stronger because Americans have more kids because we're not talking about agrarian civilizations here where every pair of hands on the farm ads proportional labor output. In service based economies, a smart person with a wealthy VC behind him can generate the GDP growth of tens of thousands of traditional labor jobs so population growth isn't the bottleneck.
> You don't need to be one to argue on this, if you have other arguments that can be substantiated with proof or facts to disprove mine.
I am not arguing with you about anything, I am stating why population is an important factor in economic growth. Are you disputing that this is the case?
> I'm not starting from the conclusion
You are starting from 'the US economy is better than Europe's because Europe is stifling high tech growth' and working backwards from there. It is incredibly obvious that is what you are doing.
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44553811 I pointed out that in the past a lot (former) successful German software were simply bought out by US-American software companies.
The EU might point to ASML as a point of pride; but that assumes an ASML competitor wouldn't get tens of billions to compete the moment ASML is inconvenient.
It's a fake news that just don't take into account on currency value change (euro has lost some value between 2019 and 2024). But if you look really want to look at it this way, I have a bad news for new: USA has shrink 15% since January compared to Europe as EUR go from 1$ to 1.15$.
If we look at GDP at purchasing power parity from 2007 to 2023 we have this:
- European Union: 31,162 => 61,217, +96% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)
- USA: 48,050 => 82,769, +72% (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...)
Which shows a slight catching-up by the European Union over the period.
In other words, it's already been adjusted for exchange rates. If you adjust for today's USD/EUR exchange rate, you're double-adjusting it. The US dollar has dropped in the recent months, and much of that is arguably due to bad decision making by the current administration, but it hardly refutes the claim that US growth has outpaced EU growth for the few decades.
America doesn't give a flying fuck about it's people it puts corporations first.
Now I don't judge every nation has it's own culture.
China would bulldoze my hometown in 2 seconds if it meant an addition 0.1 GDP. I would say that the US is between Europe and China for balancing GDP vs protecting its citizens.
It's easy to look down on others from an ivory tower in the wealthy developed west, but consider that China was dirt poor a few decades ago. What else would you have chosen? Die of poverty while protecting the environment? Same with India. They did what they had to in order to survive.
The west did that too in the industrial revolution. China had to speed run decades of industrial evolution in years. So why gaslight other countries for doing the same thing your country did a few decades earlier?
The good news for them is China recently stopped extracting rare earths on the cheap for the west. Their cities, air, water are waaay cleaner than they were just a decade ago. Chinese cities are actually livable now.
That's why the west is scrambling to find alternative sources on the cheap in other places that will let their environment be trashed, like Ukraine and Africa, since China doesn't want to be the west's easily exploitable environmental pay-piggy anymore, and good for them.
The bad news for the planet is that environmental destruction is not stopping, it's just moving away from China to other poorer places with weaker economies and militaries who are more malleable to western pressure and corporate demands.
>China would bulldoze my hometown in 2 seconds if it meant an addition 0.1 GDP.
Your western nation most likely did the same from the industrial revolution till WW2.
Do you believe there can be trades off between consumer, environmental protections, and GDP? I do.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
At some point, protections are not feasible - and the EU's "consumer and environmental" protections are apparently unfeasibly expensive in their current form to have a competitive economy. This is also self-defeating, as only in the context of a competitive economy, would these protections have any merit or be enforceable. Beggars can't be choosers.
But I disagree with your sentiment that the EU is going too far. Look at how healthy and happy the US is and how happy and healthy we are. The market, corporations and the economy are there to serve us, not to dominate us. Their existence is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Consumer and environmental protection are not a luxury, it's essential.
And surely, tariffs and trade wars have nothing to do with anything, right? It's just this damn overregulation and nothing else!!111
Surely that's the point - a collusive oligopoly making end runs around the "free market". Just look at all the other replies, rich with apologia.
> (93) In relation to microenterprises and small enterprises, in order to ensure proportionality, it is appropriate to alleviate administrative costs without affecting the level of cybersecurity protection [...] It is therefore appropriate for the Commission to establish a simplified technical documentation form targeted at the needs of microenterprises and small enterprises. [...] In doing so, the form would contribute to alleviating the administrative compliance burden by providing the enterprises concerned with legal certainty about the extent and detail of information to be provided. [...]
> (96) In order to ensure proportionality, conformity assessment bodies, when setting the fees for conformity assessment procedures, should take into account the specific interests and needs of microenterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, including start-ups. In particular, conformity assessment bodies should apply the relevant examination procedure and tests provided for in this Regulation only where appropriate and following a risk-based approach
> (97) The objectives of regulatory sandboxes should be to foster innovation and competitiveness for businesses by establishing controlled testing environments before the placing on the market of products with digital elements. Regulatory sandboxes should contribute to improve legal certainty for all actors that fall within the scope of this Regulation and facilitate and accelerate access to the Union market for products with digital elements, in particular when provided by microenterprises and small enterprises, including start-ups.
> (118) [...] specify the simplified documentation form targeted at the needs of microenterprises and small enterprises, and decide on corrective or restrictive measures at Union level in exceptional circumstances which justify an immediate intervention [...]
> (120) [...] When deciding on the amount of the administrative fine in each individual case, all relevant circumstances of the specific situation should be taken into account [...], including whether the manufacturer is a microenterprise or a small or medium-sized enterprise, including a start-up [...]. Given that administrative fines do not apply to microenterprises or small enterprises for a failure to meet the 24-hour deadline for the early warning notification of actively exploited vulnerabilities or severe incidents having an impact on the security of the product with digital elements, nor to open-source software stewards for any infringement of this Regulation, and subject to the principle that penalties should be effective, proportionate and dissuasive, Member States should not impose other kinds of penalties with pecuniary character on those entities.
First, I believe that you are correct in that small enterprises are not going to be fined out of existence (unless they continually fail to adhere to CRA requirements). The issue is that if you want to make a browser in the EU, you have to be extremely serious about it.
Second, you are quoting from the section of the act that the EU uses to lay out their reasoning, justification, and thought process. This section is not legally binding. The actual text (page ~28 and beyond in the linked document) is what controls. We have seen from DMA enforcement in regard to Apple that the EC does not consider conflicts between the two sections to be important.
The current browser vendors have made the web so complex that this is already the case regardless of what laws do or do not impose. It's simply too large a project to implement one for any non-serious project to succeed (as evidenced by the fact that we haven't got a new browser since... Chrome. Microsoft edge sort of I guess but that project was abandoned and they moved to chrome).
Why is this a problem?
No, really; why is it a bad thing that if you want to create a complete new browser, you have to actually be serious and committed to it?
A web browser is a pretty significant piece of software, and it sits between you and the entire web. You do your banking through it. You access your email through it. You book flights through it.
If the browser is badly constructed or malicious, any of these very vital functions can fail in unpredictable ways, be compromised by unknown third parties, or even be deliberately intercepted by the browser itself.
Here in the US, and especially for tech people like us, we're used to thinking of software as a complete free-for-all: anyone can make anything they want, and anyone must be allowed to make anything they want! That's what Freedom means!
But that kind of freedom can have pretty serious consequences if it's treated without respect or abused. Frankly, I'm glad to see the EU starting to put some genuine safeguards in place for the people who have to use the software we make, to ensure that we can't just foist off crap on them and when they get their identity stolen because of our negligence, just say "lol too bad, Not Guaranteed Fit For Any Purpose, deal with it".
The original article has a quote from Apple saying that they don't know why nobody has submitted any new browser for them to approve and then goes on to list a bunch of reasons for why this is the case. All of which center on Apple being obstinate. If Apple was suddenly a nice friendly corporation, would the browser landscape in the EU change much?
The CRA has been law for less than 9 months. I don't think that the general software developer community has awaken to what it is going to involve when full enforcement begins in 2027. I believe that at least some of the people that had originally planned to create new browsers in the EU have reconsidered now that they know what their obligations in 1.5 years will be. And that is probably a good thing (but not Apple's fault).
Not immediately. Because there are literally no browser vendors beyond the existing three. Everyone else is just söapping on different coats pf paint on Chromium.
But then there's Ladybird for example https://2025.stateofthebrowser.com/speaker/andreas-kling/
It just won't be in any Android default list.
If the link goes to something that should open in another app (e.g. goes to instagram.com when I have the Instagram app installed), unless I satisfy its demands to install Chrome, it takes like 3 extra clicks to open in that other app.
If you receive an address in an iMessage, clicking/long-holding will always open in Apple Maps. There is no way to share to Google Maps (it doesn't appear in the list), and the default setting to use Google Maps doesn't affect iMessage.
You have to copy the address, switch to Google Maps, paste it in, and search. I would much prefer clicking the address to open in the app of my choice.
If I click on an address received via iMessage, it will open the "default app for navigation". If I long press it, the context menu will say "get directions" which opens the "default app", open in "google maps" if it's set as the default app. There's no option to open it in Apple Maps. If the "default app for navigation" is Apple Maps, everything I said above changes to Apple Maps.
If I click "share", Google Maps doesn't show up in the list, but neither does Apple Maps.
Where is that setting?
Settings | Apps | Default Apps has no option for Navigation (iPhone SE 18.5, in New Zealand). Maybe EU thing?
* Navigation (in some countries and regions1) –– choose another app instead of the Apple Maps app to use when opening links for a location
I don't have this option in the US.
However, when I use Google Maps, I do have the behavior described elsewhere in this thread: it constantly bugs me to open the links in chrome (which I’ve never had installed) even though I always click “use default browser”. Googling something in safari also regularly prompts me to install chrome.
I can share just fine from messages to other apps like Tesla or other mapping software like ABRP. I don’t see a Google Maps share provider anywhere on my device though
Google maps and google.com shouldn’t prompt either. No prompts.
The pettiness is off the charts
1. Using Apple Maps makes the switching cost to other devices (that don't have Apple Maps) higher.
2. Having more users makes any future monetization more valuable. I understand that there doesn't yet appear to be any direct monetization but I very much expect to see it at some point.
3. Removing traffic from competitors hurts them making their product relatively better the the competitors.
Same thing with Apple operating iMessage for free without ads... they don't care about monetizing iMessage but it's also not about altruism.
I do wish there was a non-privacy invading maps app outside of Apple though.
(Old HN discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 )
I wish Apple was more strict on this. There is no reason for them to have their own. Same with the photo viewer.
I love the iOS photo viewer, it allows me to select text directly to copy it etc, but Reddit needs to use their own.
On the other hand, it should be possible for me to set up a default photo viewer.
I assume it's so they can track what option you choose.
I really am not a fan of apps wanting me to engage more with the app when I'm trying to engage with real-life people.
Perhaps they mean it looks better for Reddit’s smarmy user engagement metrics.
If Android shipped with Firefox or Vivaldi or something as its default browser, I’d bet anything that Google’s Android apps would do the exact same Chrome-pushing as their iOS apps.
Despite all of that, there are no such shenanigans on Android. The reason is almost certainly that Google had to implement such a workaround due to Apple's refusal to allow users to set default apps, and that workaround stuck.
[0]: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...
I'm using Android, with my default browser set to Firefox Focus, and I found:
- Every few months, the default browser gets reset to Chrome. I don't know this has happened until I realise I'm looking at something in Chrome. Then I look at the default browser setting, see it changed to Chrome (without my consent, and as far as I know, no notification), and I change it back to Firefox Focus. This has happened at least twice in the last year.
- For a while, when opening things from Google Search it opened them in Chrome. However I'm unable to replicate that now.
They used to be significantly more aggressive with it, but have dialed it back
When I click on a Google Maps link, I get asked by the OS if I want to open it using an app from the store (GMaps). I say no, go to google.com/maps and then get asked if I want to use the app or "Keep using Web". And of course at each stage, it could remember my choice, but it does not.
Bing's mobile UI is highly annoying, covering half the map by default with "recommendations". I still use it rather than Google whenever possible. Though I do use Waze when driving.
I can’t believe that their search deal with apple allows that.
Setting a default browser means when I open a link it should always use that browser without prompting.
Facebook/Messenger are another case of not respecting default browser, and always open with their own in-app browser.
Curious which Android flavour this is on. I'm running stock Android & I've found:
1. Chrome app can be set to "Disabled", but cannot be entirely uninstalled
2. When modifying any system settings that involve choosing defaults from a list of apps that could include Chrome, Chrome still appears (despite being "Disabled") & if chosen for that action opens up Chrome surprisingly fast & is magically suddenly no longer "Disabled".
On the contrary, I have not had the issue you describe with Google apps (I mainly use Gmail & Maps & both always open Firefox for me with no reversions). I also have an iPhone (for work) & Apple's complete disregard for browser defaults for links opened from most apps (including 3rd-party) drives me insane. Slack opens in Firefox but most other apps give me a popup with only Safari & (ironically) Chrome as options - clicking Chrome brings me to the App Store.
As long as people in the US can't test their web app on "firefox for iOS" without first buying a plane ticket to the EU and getting an EU sim card, all eu-only browser engines on iOS will be second-class citizens.
I think the next logical extension is that actually limiting general public use across the entire world makes apple less compliant with the DMA. Mozilla will not be able to justify putting significant effort into the iOS port as long as it can only reach a small fraction of users, so in reality the way to get browser-engine competition in the EU is to mandate that apple _not_ impose EU-specific rules about what apps can be installed.
I saw it posted on hn before. Apparently, you emulate some wifi APs that are geolocated to inside the EU and that's enough.
Safari on iOS cannot be tested without paying Apple so I generally don't for my personal stuff either.
All of that said, American developers often can't even be bothered to support characters like ñ or é, so I think it's quite reasonable to expect an EU browser to be a second class citizen for American developers. We can work around that pretty easily by simply not buying products and services that don't work well in the EU.
It's the perverse incentives where companies with a captive audience that can't easily churn will be the ones that ship broken half-arsed sites and not care.
One phenomena I am seeing more that makes me boil with fury is infinite captchas in Firefox. If Firefox increasingly gets excluded "for security" then...
I can't figure out if this is true. I certainly get constant captchas, but everybody else I know who uses firefox is also ad-blocking, dropping cookies, resisting fingerprinting, forging referers, downloading embedded videos, etc. etc... A lot of us look like anonymous bot traffic because we are trying to look like anonymous bot traffic. I don't know what the solution would be.
This is driven by enhanced tracking prevention. If you turn that off for the respective site, then it goes away.
Pretty sure I try disabling protections in such situations but maybe not. I returned to the last site that did it to me to try this out (on a different machine) and it didn't captcha me at all with protections on! Ugh.
I welcome the Safari walled garden because if Apple have to allow chrome on ios, that's the end of any cross browser testing (and the end of Firefox)
1. A form that could not find anymore a picture when they selected it from the Mac Photos app. Apparently Photos creates a temporary file that disappears before the browser submits the form, when probably reads it again from disk. No problems when the picture is loaded from a normal folder. We should read the picture into the memory of the browser and add it to the form from there, of transition to a JSON request. My customer decided that it's a niche case and it's not worth working on it.
2. A slight misalignment of an arrow and a checkbox, but that also happens in a different way with Chrome and Firefox, so there is some structural bug in the DOM/CSS of those UI elements. We're working on that.
Except those issues I can't remember any cross browser or cross OS problems in the last years. If it works in Firefox it works in Chrome and Safari too.
Arduously?
Check this very surprising thing out:
https://github.com/WebKitForWindows/WebKitRequirements/relea...
This is how Playwright has a webkit engine. An old discussion:
https://schepp.dev/posts/running-webkit-on-windows/
And this visual engine rendering compare tool leverages it:
https://github.com/niutech/splitbrowser
Separately, not sure if/when this will be a real thing for Linux:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/kag-orion-web-browser-co...
Being able to run cross-platform browsers on iOS does in fact make the very thing you're complaining about better.
I would love it if the EU did in fact force apple to release a cross-platform iOS emulator to allow web developers to properly test iOS browsers, but presumably apple would argue that there are strong technical reasons there (and the DMA differentiates real technical reasons from monopolistic arbitrary roadblocks).
For making browsers available across regions, that's very obviously not driven by strong technical reasons. Making cross-platform code has real technical burden.
Customers bought Samsung tablets to use our SaaS product. If you're in the right area of business, you can just ignore Safari.
> but presumably apple would argue that there are strong technical reasons there
They already have to make the appropriate iOS simulators and firmware for European developers. Making that available to American developers costs them nothing extra. They just don't want to.
I'd be pissed if someone did that for my browser engine of choice. Also, from what I understand, Apple still leads in accessibility, so this would be an asshole move towards consumers stuck in that ecosystem just because Google and Microsoft can't get their act together.
I read it differently. I don't think they said somehow block people from using their browser of choice, but that if you report an issue, the first thing tech support will do is ask you to use a different browser. I think it is reasonable.
A very unreasonable expectation.
For smaller businesses and hobbyists it feels like expecting support for all major browsers would be discouraging in a negative way. I appreciate digital art even if it doesn’t work in my favorite browser and a shitty online menu for a food truck is better than none.
@javcasas for sure it's not practical if you want to develop with it, I was more thinking of testing on preprod/prod.
But maybe ngrok can be sufficient to test your local dev from the VM?
10 cents is the smallest of the associated expenses. You are ignoring all the other expenses.
For small amounts of usage, the cheapest I’ve ever seen is $1 per hour, with a minimum spend past $30, with various further strings attached. And most are much more than that.
But it's not $1 per hour.
Download the windows version from their website?
If Apple doesn't want to make their browser available for other hardware that's on them and they'll suffer the consequences. Blocking other entities from making their browser available on Apple's hardware is very different.
VM is EU. Heck, it can be an ephemeral instance on EC2, so it would only cost money while in use, probably tens of cents or something.
If there's a will, there's a way.
Only real devices allow to test these aspects properly.
We must not agree that all the market will be taken by one engine (i.e. Chromium)
So what I think about the EU directive is that it basically allows one company (Google) take over the whole market. Because what we have to choose between is MS Edge (Chromium), Chrome (Chromium), Vivaldi (Chromium) and other Chromium based forks. And I forgot about Firefox which is the margin atm.
I didn't want to say that Apple should allow other engines. What I wanted to say is that I'm scared that once iOS allows installation of chrome, there will become only one engine in the world and THIS will be THE MONOPOLY we don't want to have.
Hindsight is 20/20, but remember that Google has paid Mozilla 3.8 BILLION DOLLARS in the past 10 years alone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation#Finances
You could do a lot with 3.8 billion dollars, if you spent it on your core mission and not chasing Bay Area trendy shit. Mitchell Baker is still there, making phat bank, she's just the chair of the Mozilla Foundation instead of being the CEO of Mozilla Corporation.
FF's real threat, as open source software, is either:
1. further capture of mozilla and intentional degradation by google to the point of obscurity
2. organizational implosion followed by google deliberating requiring changes to web standards that break firefox in a way that open source contributions struggle to keep up with
3. a paradigm shift in how we use the internet (i.e. people transition to interacting with AI 98% of the time)
Even though all those browsers use the blink engine they are dramatically different experiences, features and support.
Yup. It's a lose-lose situation
If this would be only about security as Apple claims, there would be no reason to restrict this to the EU and to force Browser vendors to publish other engines as separate apps after they meet the security conditions Apple imposes.
Apple may or (more likely) may not be complying in terms of allowing third party browser engines, but I don't see how you can argue that not implementing this _outside_ the EU fails to comply with EU law (which applies _inside_ the EU).
That's not to say they shouldn't allow this elsewhere (although it will just cement the Chrome monopoly - actually _decreasing_ competition and solidifying the incumbent's position) but I don't think you can argue that this law requires them to do that.
I don't think this is a secret - Apple publicly opposes these kinds of laws.
> And within the limits the law allows, they're doing everything they can to make it tedious and difficult to actually get alternative apps stores or browser engines on their OS.
Sure, it's unclear what the EU can do to oppose this though. If they push too far they risk invoking the wrath of the much more powerful US government.
You have progressive states passing similar legislation as the EU within the US so I bet they'll be getting the firm hand first if anything.
https://www.politico.eu/article/victory-eu-donald-trump-meta...
what is it going to do?
threaten massive tariffs then retreat?
repeatedly?
Is that surprising in any way?
They've been asked to not reject third party browser engines in the EU. Check.
Google has plenty of developers in the EU so I'm not even sure what people want exactly.
how can people think like this
By limiting this change to the EU, Apple displays that they clearly are able to add support for multiple browser engines without compromising security if forced to, so the only reason left is their unwillingness to commit to their users freedom of choice.
It’s just greed, nothing more.
noo, that how law works
EU make an law that forces Apple to adhere, apple make changes that suit the new law
if its works in EU only then its working as intended
This is about securing the phone in Apple's interest against the desires of the user.
That's not even getting into the resources/battery life aspect.
This is anti-competitive and should be illegal, too.
As a web dev, I happen to love some of the tech advancements in Chromium, and as a nerd, I'd be thrilled to see it on iOS, just for the fun technical novelty of it all. But allowing it on iOS will downright kill WebKit, as web devs will just code for Chrome (as they already do). The floodgates will be opened.
As a user, I value battery life, smooth performance, and system integration (technically and visually). It's great to use an Apple browser on an Apple OS, just as it is nice to use Chrome on Android—everything fits together.
Gosh, I miss the pre-Blink days when WebKit was able to benefit from Chromium, but alas…
Not in the least.
If anyone who wants can make a complete browser for iOS, then, for instance, Meta could come out with their own Facebook™ Browser that does extra super duper tracking on them and everyone they interact with online.
Or Russia/China/Trump/Obama/whoever you hate most could make their own browser that inserts propaganda into websites, redirects you away from sites that are critical of them, etc.
Or straight-up criminals could make browsers that steal your credit card info.
And a) Apple would be put in the position of having to do comprehensive testing on all these browsers to make sure they did not do these things, even in unusual situations, and b) do you actually trust Apple's App Review system to catch it all? 'Cause I like Apple, and I sure as hell don't. Especially in cases like the latter, where they could create a dozen profiles and have each one submit a dozen slightly different versions of their compromised browser (eg, one that's Skibidi Toilet themed, one that's got scantily-clad women (just PG enough that Apple won't ban them for that) framing the pages, one each themed for the MCU movies...)
> Safari is the highest margin product Apple has ever made, accounts for 14-16% of Apple’s annual operating profit
It means that if someone else comes up with a much better browser engine than Safari’s, iPhone users cannot use it so Safari remains competitive even though it may have a browser engine that’s lacking, since others are forced to use Safari’s browser engine and not their much better engine.
Safari as a browser is great on iOS. The problem is the forced default of google search, and worse, you can't even use search engines outside of a very small number of built-in. E.g. I can't set the. default to be kagi. This is because the money from google is dependant on them sending users to the "search" site.
I'm not saying I'd prefer that scenario, just that it would have been a feasible choice for Apple and as such their Safari costs are actually profit losing not profit generating (other than potentially indirectly, if Apple is correct that limiting devices to their own browser engine improves the product and therefore aids device sales, but I don't think anyone would argue that's significant enough to call it their biggest profit driver).
Plus, in this store nobody is buying any of the items, the only revenue is from the Nestlé sign above the door, which they'd earn even if they threw all of their own brand products into the bin rather than letting customers have them. So it's not an exact analogy...
The status quo has all of the problems of a monopoly. Doing this or not doing this won't change that. But it will remove another barrier to consumers being able to do what they want.
Apple, with their iOS browser lock-in, is the greatest gift ever to the open web.
Google also has bad incentives (Android, ads) but Safari is the IE6 of modern web.
It's the browser we're FORCED to have installed for the occasional shitty flight or hotel booking that doesn't work in Firefox.
IE flat out refused to implement features that were agreed upon by standards bodies. They pushed for VML development and ignored SVG. They ignored CSS3 in favor of their DirectX filters. Chrome does indeed put experimental features out there AFTER they support the standards. Firefox also has agreed to a set of web standards and is simply behind on implementation.
Having lived(as a developer) through IE4 - IE9, I reserve that title of "the new IE" for the worst offenders.
- You can fairly easily list them in the Google's app store, whereas they are basically banned from Apple's app store
- iOS/Safari is much more aggressive about deleting data from PWAs
On MacOS, where there has long been engine choice, Safari market share is >50%. Defaults are powerful and many users are happy with the real and perceived benefits of the first-party brand.
Safari has >90% market share on iOS today. If engine competition were permitted, they might lose a few percent initially, but would be highly motivated to close any gaps.
There's no world in which WebKit usage among the world's wealthiest consumers drops low enough that web developers can target a chromium monoculture. The purpose of engine choice is to create real competition in order to motivate Apple to do better.
I do also think there are a lot of downsides to letting big tech companies exercise tight control over stuff, especially when it is anti-competitive. The slowing of Chrome is a good outcome, but there are plenty of other downsides that come along with allowing Apple (and others) to have these policies.
But the US's system certainly doesn't allow that (and, of course, there isn't going to be any serious antitrust in the US for the foreseeable future anymore). I have no idea if the EU's does, but I really don't think they have sufficient jurisdiction to do things like break up Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Which is definitely necessary to address these problems.
Make no mistake: the reason we are here is because of the morally- and intellectually-bankrupt shift to the Chicago School-backed philosophy of antitrust under Reagan, coupled with a government—at all levels, in all branches—that didn't understand technology, and collectively refused to learn, for decades.
Might as well get it over with quickly.
In case it's not obvious, these crutches should be removed.
Treat Google paying Apple for the use of Google's search engine and Mozilla for the same thing, as anti-competitive (they're token gestures propping up the monopoly).
And break Google up in multiple companies. Not sure along which lines but I would steer towards platforms (Android + Chrome + Search + Docs + Cloud; banned from entering advertising), Play Store, Ads.
The same thing should be done to Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. Nobody has the guts anymore.
I think nobody has the manpower to deal with all the shit. The EU already regularly fines big companies, but for every fine they get away with so much.
We already went through this in the IE era, and it was an ugly period. We don't need to do that again. That isn't to say we need to endure the status quo, but we are in a dangerous situation where the fixes aren't easy or obvious.
You're literally defending a megacorporations monopoly and abuse of users so they can continue denying free choice to people using phones.
You're literally saying that the browser the users are right now forced to used by a megacorporation is so bad, they would refuse to use it in the future. And then you double down on the bootlicking by demanding that they continue forcing the use of their supposedly inferior product.
(After all, if the product is actually good, why would people switch?)
And with that you're entrenching megabillionare interests and outright banning creation of opensource.
Be better.
How can you say this nonsense so uncritically?
I really appreciate that you sacrifice your happiness in favor of Apple profits so I can have multiple browsers competing against chrome.
Thank you.
Have you considered you are just rationalizing your condition rather than having a genuine take?
Its easier to cope with the idea that you've chosen this 'freedom', than to realize you don't have it.
Consider adding this to your website:
<script src="https://eff.org/defend_the_web.js"></script>
If you use another browser today even if it does use Apple’s engine, Apple’s not making search revenue from Google.
The second point is that it came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchasing. Those apps are not going to the web.
Third, if the only thing stopping great web apps is Apple, why aren’t their popular web apps for Android and why do companies that produce iOS apps still create Android apps instead of telling Android users to just use the web?
I don't think you are correct to assume games can't go to the web. Any feature they need from native APIs can be added to the web. Full screen, gyro, vibration, multi touch, payment APIs, notifications, WASM and GPU support are already on the web!
But it’s not about the technology even then. Games make money via in app purchases by whales. In app purchasing is easy and they are able to tap into kids spending money. Most parents aren’t going to put their credit cards on kids phones. They will let kids do in app purchases with parental controls that are available on the App Store.
Heck, most developers don't even produce versions of their games for any Apple hardware, even though there are plenty of cross-platform development suites.
Yes, but this would limit the browser technology to Apple's implementation, or lack there of.
> Those apps are not going to the web.
It's likely because the mobile browsers don't support enough graphics and lacking robust control features of native applications.
> Third, if the only thing stopping great web apps is Apple ...
Having wide browser support across all operating systems would definitely increase the adoption speed of new technologies. Remember how IE7 kept us back for years?
That being said, a lot of people are bothered by Apple's success and would like to access to iOS ecosystem without paying anything to them.
Even if they did an iOS app + web app for Android, if it were just Apple, they would still save money on Android Play Store fees.
But the truth is that browsers aren’t good enough on Android even though it is “open” [sic] and most Android phones sold are so underpowered that you have to make a native app to get any type of responsiveness.
Having the Firefox engine or Chrome engine isn’t going to make it any better. If the alternate browsers that are on the Mac are any indication from both companies - they are going to be slower and less battery efficient.
Nothing is going to change in the short term for sure. Users also prefer the responsive feeling of native apps in general, though progressive web apps might help slightly.
I still believe that the EU started with the correct intentions with the DMA. They saw a need to increase the competition in the digital marketplace. However, it slowly turned into a public trial of Apple and transferring the ownership of iOS ecosystem to public domain almost.
Facebook for instance realized years ago that it would have to make real native apps to get decent performance instead of the app being a web wrapper.
The end-goal is to turn Apple into a pure hardware vendor so that they can get direct access to end-users.
2. Many of those games could be rewritten in WebGPU/WebGL2.. if it saved them 30% appstore tax, and the install process was decent and they had frictionless payments, they'd move.
3. Because Apple is the primary target market, and if you've already built native for iOS, what's the advantage of doing web for Android if your not making the cost savings of only having to build one app. 70% of Desktop usage is now the web/web apps... that tells you what's possible if browsers can compete.
If the game makers are do interested in saving the 30% tax, then why aren’t they making the games web based for Android? Gabe makers want the easy in app purchases and getting kids who while they don’t have credit cards on their phones, do have access to buy content in apps with parental controls.
How is iOS the primary market when 70% of mobile phones both worldwide and in the EU are on Android?
If they already have a web app for PCs, then why do they need to make an Android app too if web apps are so great on Android?
And if the web makes such a good platform for games, then why aren’t there more great games on the web that would run on PCs and Android unmodified?
The fact is that Apple makes tens of billions in pure profit from Safari, and by closing off one of the principal ways of browser differentiation have ensured that they don't even need to invest in Safari. They can just lean back, safe in the knowledge that there is no risk of disruption.
(Like, the main selling point of Firefox on Android is support for browser extensions, and they're only able to do that thanks to having their own browser engine rather than using the platform-provided one.)
You never know where exactly the next steps in browser innovation are going to come from, but it is virtually guaranteed that they won't be just in the UI chrome. If you're e.g. going to make the best agentic AI browser in the world, it's not going to happen by reskinning Safari, and as a corollary Apple doesn't need to worry about competing with such a browser.
And Safari has had real browser extensions for years on iOS.
Where is the browser “innovation” on Android - the platform with 70% market share?
Last I checked, Firefox isn’t doing to well on Android either…
Firefox’s market share on mobile is 0.53%.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/world...
That brings me to this: Chrome extensions are valuable and we know as early as the rumors of Apple being forced to open up, Google started working on iOS port, but really, is there any justification for bringing a browser engine to iOS? I really don't understand how will it be beneficial when the user probably will notice anything.
Also we only have like four players to enter: Google (which will come), Mozilla (broke and miss-managed as hell), GNOME Web (will never come), Ladybug Browser (they are crazy and will definitely come someday, but it takes a long time for them to be an actual player)
So my question is: Will all this effort even fruit?
Apple's WebKit is renowned to be lagging behind, refusing to implement crucial features and being rigged with bugs, hence limiting the capabilities and quality of web apps, and effectively preventing them to compete with native apps.
Getting other browser engines on iOS would be beneficial for developers, businesses and end user by making mobile web apps viable.
Otherwise, yes it's likely web apps will prompt their user to use a browser with a capable engine on iOS if they exist. Nothing to configure, install and use.
Users will then be able to use capable web apps that take up a tenth of the storage of native apps, that are cheaper and portable across platforms — among many other benefits.
So 16 people are thanking you together.
I feel you could be more aggressive in the questions given that no follow-up seems to be allowed. Apple's "were doing all of this for security" is clearly just a cheap excuse. You're given only one shot and are up against professional deflectors (lawyers).
The lawyer's "I'm not discrediting you for who you do or don't get money from like Spotify" is just cheap rhetoric 101. He prefers to chip "You think You know better how to design our OS" rather than answer the question on how non-EU devs can test. Empty "we're engaging with Google/Mozilla...". That's not an answer!
Without healthy browser diversity, the web might as well be renamed the Chrome Protocol and the "browser choice" you care about so much is gone.
It's a form of regulatory capture, coopting legislation to rid the market of remaining competition.
https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...
Developers exclusively targeting Chrome and forcing users to switch isn't browser choice, it just replaces one kind of non-choice with another kind of non-choice.
Anybody has the number of committers to webkit from Apple? It would give us a good idea on the margin of the product.
Assuming 100 engineers costing Apple 500k per year, that's 50 millions in investment for 20 billion in revenue.
> For each 1% browser market share that Apple loses for Safari, Apple is set to lose $200 million in revenue per year.
They should be investing like crazy to make Safari the best browser out there instead of just relying on their monopole. And why the fuck is there no Windows version to make their iOS users happy?
Safari is actually a pretty great browser, both technically and from a user perspective, and the complaints often levied on sites like this usually boil down to "Why do alternatives to Chrome exist? So annoying! I'm incredibly lazy and want to just deploy whatever half-baked non-standard ad-benefiting nonsense Google threw into Chrome this month". There was a Safari for Windows for some time but they had a small enough uptake that they abandoned it.
Simple. Apple doesn't want you to use Windows. They want you to buy an expensive Apple computer instead.
( `git log --since="1 year ago" --pretty="%cn <%ce>" | grep "apple" | sort -u | wc -l` )
Of course there's more to Safari than just Webkit, and there's more than just committers. So yes, the number may be close to 500 in total.
Assuming a generous 500k cost per employee, we reach 250 million USD, which is less than 2% of what they get for Safari.
Safari is essentially pure profit.
So true. It didn’t occur to me that I had naturally assumed Safari to be worse, when it would have been better in a more competitive market. So by relying on monopolistic behavior, Apple is also partly responsible for the Chromium monopoly (that this law will help solidify).
Right now in many MRT stations throughout Taipei, there's ads for Safari. I don't think I ever in my life have seen an advertisement for a web browser until now. I guess now I know why.
I think the discussion should focus more on why benefit is this small for users to switch.
With browser selection dialog, I think vendors have already 0 cost channel for UA. I don't think new binary would make a big difference.
The article doesn’t mention Apple’s persistent refusal of JIT support for 3rd party JavaScript engines, which is a main barrier to implementing a performant 3rd party browser.
Perhaps there's some scenario where webkit usage collapses and chrome increases here that I'm not seeing, and/or some security management issues.
Increasingly I'm looking at remote streaming browsers to get what's needed for some use cases.
This browser engine ban is unique to Apple and no other
gatekeeper imposes such a restriction.
DMA seems to be an EU thing, which I'm guessing makes Asia not relevant here.
Only state coercion — big fat fines (% of the total income) make any difference.
I think personal criminal liability would be a nice step to make corporations finally respect the law, but that's too much to ask from late stage capitalism.
Apple is behaving like the Standard Oil Company of the 2020s.
Steps to reproduce: 0. Select a different default browser, delete the Safari app (just for good measure, even though it's not really possible just like deleting IE in older Win versions) 1. Open the Books app 2. Select text 3. Select Search 4. Press Search the Web 5. Safari search results open as you stare in disbelief
You know a company has long lost the innovation race when the company is run by the lawyers and bean counters instead of the engineers, trying to milk their product lines form 10+ years ago. I wonder how long until they resort to becoming a patent troll ... oh wait. Their final form will be selling ads to their users.
"But due process!!". For individuals and SMEs, sure. For mega companies, absolutely not. Getting to rake in billions of profits should come with a loss of privileges, not with a gain. That needs to be the trade-off.
If only they would give the same due process to the users and app devs before they close their accounts.
Companies want and exploit all the perks of the liberal democratic western societies that helped them make what they are today and reciprocate with defying the laws and tax avoidance, while bowing down to foreign dictatorships no problem.
The only way you stop them abusing this is to put an executive to jail. Because that's why they instantly bow down to China. Braking the law in China is a legal problem with personal accountability, breaking the law in the west is just an accounting problem that you can easily pay your way out of.
The moment you put someone in jail, everyone stops breaking the law immediately, because nobody likes the idea of going to jail.
In the USA any given administration can try something like that and one party or the other will work with whatever company is being sanctioned out of pure spite, or will know that divisions in the USA mean that all that a company needs to do is play just enough lip service to appear respectful to the current admin. Worse case scenario, they wait four years. See: nvidia flagrantly selling cards to the PRC through Singapore.
I disagree with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ideology, but to be fair the remnants of it that survived Deng Xiaoping does seem to somewhat work in resisting the influence of foreign capitalists.
Tim Cook isn't going to jail in China, Apple has local employees of their branch that can go to jail and pretty sure they don't want to so they aren't gonna defy their government.
>I disagree with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" ideology
Sure, but then the masses easily switch their opinions when they see the whole due process is only for the super rich, and when they break the law it's an open and shut case.
I'm a bit confused by this, can you help me understand what you mean?
I have this installed and all links I can choose between Kiwi Browser or Firefox.
The pro-Apple bias on HN is truly insufferable sometimes.
There's a deeper market argument about the relatively open GSM versus the US CDMA which was more of a Qualcomm monopoly.
God the US superiority complex can be insufferable.