[mtomweb]

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 to ship Web Apps to iOS. So the question is, how do you convince the worlds richest company to invest a extra few hundred million/year into their own browser?

The answer is competition. Competition provides Apple a deep incentive to produce a capable, feature risk browser at risk of losing users to the other vendors. Each 1% of Safari users is worth 150m/year in google search revenue, a number so large it would make even Apple take notice.

As web developers we see the value in having browser engine competition, many of us lived through the IE6 era and know the risks of the monopolistic competitive behavior like we're seeing from Apple (Side-point: At no point did Microsoft ever ban the competition).

The status-quo where Safari/Webkit was both stifling the Web and Web Apps and providing no competitive pressure on Chrome/Edge/Firefox + the severe underinvestment from Apple meant that a regulatory solution was needed.

[MBCook]

> The answer is competition

There is no competition. There is only Chrome.

This is what I was talking about. There will only be one result to opening iOS and it scares me.

FF/Opera are too small. Edge is small and really just Chrome anyway. If we had a healthy browser market I’d be fine. But we don’t.

Apple is, for the wrong reason, the only thing keeping us from total Chrome dominance.

I want one of these “just open iOS” calls to include the consequences of what they’re calling for and how they plan to deal with it.

[jsnell]

> This is what I was talking about. There will only be one result to opening iOS and it scares me.

Why? Does Apple not have the resources to build a competitive browser? Do they not have the motivation? Do they not have the engineering skills? Do they not have a large and extremely desirable user-base who prefer to stay as much as possible in Apple's ecosystem?

Given all the advantages Apple has, how could it possibly be true that they can only get users by literally banning all competition on their main platform?

[nemothekid]

Replace Apple with Microsoft and you get your answer. Since when did having a trillion dollars guarantee success? Replace Apple with any company; do you think Google lacked the motivation and engineering skills to build a social network?

Ignoring much of the fact how Google would leverage it's existing properties to make sure you couldn't open a single web page without being nagged about installing Chrome; it would take a large amount of effort for anyone to compete to where Chrome is today and the result is that people would just Chrome.

And fine, I understand that as developers you don't want the burden of testing multiple platforms or being beholden to one platform that doesn't move as fast as Chrome. But to pretend this is about the "browser diversity" is where I have the problem. Just say you want Chrome and don't buy Google's framing that this about "open standards" when Google doesn't even hold Chrome to that standard.

[stale2002]

> Since when did having a trillion dollars guarantee success?

So then your answer is that Apple's browser is significantly worse than competitors, and that users wouldn't use this much worse product if it were not for Apples anti-competitive behavior?

> But to pretend this is about the "browser diversity

> Just say you want Chrome

I think most open web supporters would be a lot happier if Apple even simply allowed Firefox.

That would still be massively better than the status quo.

Are you saying that all someone would have to do is argue for allowing just Firefox, and you would no longer do this thing where you attack some alleged secret motivations?

[nemothekid]

>So then your answer is that Apple's browser is significantly worse than competitors, and that users wouldn't use this much worse product if it were not for Apples anti-competitive behavior?

Yes. I hope it's exceedingly clear that I don't think Safari is God's gift to mankind.

>Are you saying that all someone would have to do is argue for allowing just Firefox

Yes. In fact they could be upfront and just say "just allow Chrome because I like developing for Chrome." But that's not what happens; it's "Apple is stifling competition because I want to use Netscape Navigator", when in actuality it's just developers that want to target a single platform, or Google who wants protect itself from Apple's power.

Maybe OWA is the exception here, but what I've found is the people making the most visible noise about this are connected to Google in some way. Consider this HN post from a couple days ago [1], where the author in his six-part series about browser choice, neglects to ever mention Chrome's dominance. Unsurprising that he was also a platform strategist at Google. You're telling me the guy who's job it is to make sure Google is an entrenched as possible doesn't like Apple's position on Safari? What a surprise. Then he tells you "don't worry about Chrome, this is about open standards!" - sounds underhanded to me.

At the very least, the cohort of users on Safari who can't switch prevents Google from just outright breaking some sites like Gmail and YouTube on every browser except Chrome.

[1] https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...

[Jcowell]

Exactly. Let’s be very very clear here: the death of the open web will be not only because of Google and it’s internet multi-market dominance , but because of developers wanting to make their life easier, users and the future be dammed.

[nneonneo]

Apple can’t reasonably allow Gecko (Firefox’s engine) without also allowing Blink (Chrome’s engine). And we know which one is the 800lb gorilla here.

I love and support Firefox, and I even use it on my iPhone (yes, it’s reskinned WebKit, but it syncs my stuff).

[Spivak]

I mean why not? It would actually be a pretty cool move to make Firefox a 2nd party browser on iOS given special privilege.

[MBCook]

> Does Apple not have the resources to build a competitive browser?…

They do. They did. It’s called Safari. That’s how we got here.

What they DON’T have is any care about Windows/Linux/Android users. Apple makes their browser to make their platform the way they like.

If you want Apple to provide the competitive alternate browser on other platforms you’re asking the wrong company.

> Given all the advantages Apple has, how could it possibly be true that they can only get users by literally banning all competition on their main platform?

Google pushes Chrome with the #1 OS in the world (Android). With the #1 site, google.com. And the #2, YouTube.com. And gmail. And Google Maps. Maybe Waze. Chrome OS. GSuite.

They have an INSANE amount of power to push people to Chrome and off other browsers.

I’m not arguing pro-Apple. I’m arguing anti-Google.

[agust]

Chrome is competition, and no, it's not alone: on the desktop market, where competition is not rigged as much as on mobile, Edge has 10% market share, and Firefox 7.5%. It's not insignificant.

> I want one of these “just open iOS” calls to include the consequences of what they’re calling for and how they plan to deal with it.

OWA has taken into account anti-competitive practices used by Google to gain browser market share, and made recommendation to mitigate or prevent them. In there submission to the japanese regulator [1], they include:

- 3.1.7: No Chrome Preferencing: > Google should not use their control over the operating system to provide unfair preference to their own browser, Chrome, either through the operating system or agreements with partners.

- 3.1.8: Website Transparency Obligations: > OWA suggests that where a Gatekeeper’s website does not support a browser which has above a 2% market share, they be compelled to publish a document containing detailed reasoning that prevents support of certain engines.

[1]: https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20HDMC%20(Japan)...

[frumper]

If you're taking the approach that iOS browsers are just re-skinned safari, then Edge doesn't count as it's own browser on desktop.

[agust]

Yes it does, that's a totally different situation. Edge chose to use Chromium as its engine, Microsoft takes part in its development, they are free to remove or add any component from it, and if ever they wanted to they would be free to fork it and drop it for another engine at any time. None of that is true for WebKit skins on iOS.

[snowwrestler]

Microsoft were were quite transparent about being forced to adopt Chromium because of the prevalence of Electron apps on Windows.

[migueldeicaza]

That wasn’t the reason.

Edge could just not compete with chrome, despite throwing hundreds of engineers at the problem. They tried, and tried, and tried.

In the end “edge doesn’t work” was just code for “edge is not chromium”

Electron was and is still a separate beast, Microsoft doesn’t even need to deal with that: third party developers do, they have to ship the binary.

[nneonneo]

Those recommendations are weak sauce. Websites are going to say stuff like “works best in Chrome!” and Google is going to encourage that. Nothing in those recommendations, assuming they’re even adopted, will solve that.

[nwienert]

It’s disheartening - you have good intentions but almost everything you say is backwards.

Regulation on Apple only is the opposite of encouraging competition, it’s literally calling shots against the only fighter that’s pushing back on Chrome in a significant way - on market share, and maybe more importantly, on privacy and avoiding bloating web standards to further avoid total lock-in on V8.

Second, Apple has been accelerating greatly Safari development for years now and I worry your entire organization can’t admit it’s actually a great browser and has rapidly caught up in terms of correctness and features, and is now in fact leading in many ways. That it rejects some proposals isn’t inherently wrong, by the way, and the reasoning for many is just. I’m afraid if you admitted that, it’d pop a bubble in one of your core tenets, and given you made this mission driven thing with a single purpose, you’re sort of now forced into an intellectually dishonest place.

Because as a long time web develop myself who went from IE to Firefox to Chrome to Safari as my main browsers over the years, there’s simply *no doubt* that Safari as of a year or two ago started whooping Chromes ass. Like not even close, it feels like a different type of thing. It’s insanely fast, across so many dimensions, lighter, and I don’t get incompatibility almost ever anymore.

Your mission would achieve the opposite of what it wants - Apples platform isn’t a monopoly, Google's are. Google has a monopoly on Search, Browsers, and influence on the web. This would only strengthen the worse/stronger fighter. And it's all premised on a fundamentally unsound critique of Safari.

[stjohnswarts]

Why do I care if developing in Safari is hard for developers? If iOS opens up to chrome, it's game over for any kind of competition in the mobile browser war. Google will take over web standards and the death of the old republic will be complete. Android is your answer if you don't want Safari.

[snowwrestler]

Lots of people want to explain why the government should force Apple to let native Chrome onto iOS.

I don't see anyone explaining what will force Google to continue supporting Safari once they have Chrome on iOS.

The reality is that they probably won't. Safari will break for Google services and pixels, and the only answer will be "switch to Chrome, things don't break there." Bye bye competition.

[JCWasmx86]

While I admire your stance on the internet being open I disagree.

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...

[mtomweb]

Anti-Competitive Behaviour from google should also be addressed by regulators.

Our suggestions were covered in sections: 3.1.7 No Chrome Prefrencing 3.1.8 Website Transparency Obligations

https://open-web-advocacy.org/files/OWA%20-%20HDMC%20(Japan)...

[nneonneo]

As parent stated, Google can simply neglect to make their apps work well in Safari. They’ve done so in the past; GMail on Firefox was nigh-unusable due to a raft of dumb bugs for a long time, and it still uses substantially more CPU and memory than literally any other tab I have open on my browser. Right now they have to make an effort to support WebKit (Safari); as soon as they can push Blink (Chrome) to users, that motivation will go away.

[IX-103]

To be fair, it's not like Safari is free. Should site owners have to pay Apple to make sure that their website shows up well in Safari?

That seems like it creates perverse incentives for Apple to keep Safari "broken".

[simondotau]

In a discussion about encouraging browser diversity, are you seriously arguing that it’s an unreasonable burden on web developers to ensure their websites work on more than one browser engine?

[joshuamorton]

> There was even a precedent for something similar: [1]

No there wasn't, unless you mean killing a 10 year old version of Internet explorer with a banner to a newer version of Internet explorer is somehow playing unfair.

[dmitriid]

Yes, there was. See this thread from Mozilla's former Vice President: https://archive.ph/2019.04.15-165942/https://twitter.com/joh... (or directly on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686)

[JCWasmx86]

Maybe precedent was an unfair word - I apologize - but it shows, how Google can/could use the power of having one of the most used websites in order to influence the choice of the browser.