[philliphaydon]

> This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants.

Hahhahahhahahahaha. We will end up with chrome. And developers targeting chrome and safari users being left out because “works best in chrome for my text based website that doesn’t do anything safari can’t do”.

[Apocryphon]

Sounds like Apple needs to work harder to make Safari into a better mobile browser, if you're so sure that Chrome would win.

[philliphaydon]

There’s other browsers on android. No one uses them.

Safari is great. It works. No issues. But developers will do what they did to ie. develop for chrome and shove a banner up blocking safari.

[Apocryphon]

Again, sounds like Apple needs to do a better job improving Safari. If developers and consumers choose Chrome, it's up to competitors to find a way to disrupt their lead, not engage in monopolistic practices to stop a monopoly.

[philliphaydon]

There’s nothing to improve.

Developers want push notifications on a web browser for mobile? That’s not an improvement.

Firefox is a better browser than chrome but you can’t move people away from chrome.

So regardless of what you think. Adding other browsers to iOS will only have a negative long term effect.

[Apocryphon]

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

[joshstrange]

It's not a shallow dismissal and your comments only prove you either don't understand the landscape or are choosing to ignore what's staring you in the face.

Try to use any google property on Safari (or non-chrome browser on any platform) and see all the times Google tries to push you to use Chrome and/or sign into your google account. When logged in it puts a banner at the bottom of every google search and when you aren't logged in it shows a modal that takes 1/3rd of the page.

Google reigns supreme on the web from everything from search to email and docs/drive/etc. Their reach is massive. They have in the past and will continue in the future to use that reach to push people to use their browser engine. How does Apple/Safari/Webkit compete with that? It's not that the browser is better but that the sites they visit push them to use a different browser.

[tester756]

I do use FF

[toyg]

That's self-defeatist. You mentioned IE downthread; IE is not the dominant browser anymore, and the reason for that is not just that MS stagnated, but that it was challenged vigorously by competitors that exploited new opportunities better. This is one such opportunity.

[Miraste]

Chrome was better than IE, but it won out not because of technical capabilities but through Google's constant and ruthless exploitation of its web properties and operating systems. That already happens on iOS, and I'm sure a Google SVP reading this ruling just started a project to intensify it.

[toyg]

And by doing so, they painted a massive target on their back. On the EU list, they come just a step under Apple, don't worry.

[philliphaydon]

Firefox and Opera browsers could run Google apps just fine. Remember the days when Firefox and Opera got a cut down version of gmail, but if you changed the user agent on the browser to chrome it worked just fine.

That’s how chrome became popular.

[toyg]

FF took ages to come to mobile. Opera actually became pretty popular in Asia, precisely because they exploited well the move to mobile, and was screwed only by stupid commercial manoeuvers.