[eitland]

Chrome in itself is not the problem. Competition is good. Firefox is better now thanks to Chrome.

Neither is Safari. Safari is actually part of the solution. Safari has saved Firefox and other browsers by being the only option on iOS for a long time and a better choice for many (because of battery usage) on Mac OS. Without Safari I am afraid we would all be locked into Chrome now.

The problem is that Google, like Microsoft before them,

1. used their dominant position in one market to force their way into dominating another market,

2. used various underhanded tactics to make users think Chrome were better while in reality it was just given better treatment by their backend servers and also the Googles frontend devs[1]

3. and that unlike Microsoft they still haven't got a multi billion fine for it and haven't been forced to advertise alternative browsers for months.

[1]: see various bugs[2] in everything from the core of the Angular framework to Google Calendar to YouTube

[2]: yes, I am generous enough to consider them bugs. I am fairly certain though that bugs that doesn't affect Chrome aren't exactly considered top priority.

[TheDong]

> Safari is actually part of the solution ...

> Google, like microsoft, <1-3>

If you're going to complain about 1-3 for google and ms, I don't think you can praise safari in the same breath.

Apple's abused their position with the iPhone to make safari relevant, and unlike Chrome and IE, users can't just install another browser.

Apple's behavior is the only reason I can't run my own addons I've written for firefox on iOS (they run _fine_ on android of course), why I can't run uBlock origin on iOS, and so on.

Apple's behavior on iOS is far more egregious than anything microsoft or google has ever done.

I never once had to run IE or Chrome unwillingly since I could always install netscape, or mosaic, or firefox.

I'm forced to run Safari, unable to decently block ads, unable to use the adons I've written, unable to fork and patch my browser to fix bugs, and I've generally had my software freedoms infringed... and if I don't run safari, then I can't talk to my family group chat (no androids allowed, sms breaks the imessage group features too much) or talk to my grandma who only knows how to use facetime.

I wish so much I could use a phone with firefox, but I can't justify having a spare iPhone just to talk to my family, so I'm kinda forced to suffer through safari, held hostage by apple's monopolistic iMessage behavior.

The only thing that comes close to Apple's behavior is Google's campaign to force Chromebooks upon children in classrooms, requiring them to use Chrome, but at least Google isn't holding their grandmother's hostage... and managed work/school devices already are kinda expected to have substantially less freedom than personal devices, so it feels much less egregious.

[rimunroe]

Maybe I missed something but your arguments seem be about how Apple’s locking down of iOS/iPadOS and Safari are harmful to user freedom. That’s a very different argument from the one the person you’re replying to was making. They were saying that the popularity of Apple’s mobile devices coupled with their only running Safari holds back a Chrome monopoly in the browser space. If people don’t support Safari they lose out on a large portion of users.

[talldayo]

> If people don’t support Safari they lose out on a large portion of users.

If people don't support Safari, it's because the free market has spoken and overwhelmingly chooses alternative options: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

The story would be different, if Apple wasn't miserly with their native APIs and App distribution. But this is indeed a harmful and competition-restricting decision, even in Mozilla's opinion: https://mozilla.github.io/platform-tilt/

So I think we can safely assume that Apple's policy harms browser diversity by forcing their users to support a single minority option. If their users preferred a more feature-filled browser, we would never know; they aren't sincerely presented an alternative choice. If Apple wants their users to defend Safari, maybe they should invest in it until their browser (or Operating System, for that matter) competes with Chrome. Until then, they're promoting a megalomaniac solution and being a sore loser about it at the same time.

[troupo]

> because the free market has spoken

You mean the company dominating the internet heavily promoted and pushed users towards its own browser.

> If their users preferred a more feature-filled browser

Where by "feature-filled" you mean "all the Chrome-only non-standards because free market or something"

[talldayo]

> You mean the company dominating the internet heavily promoted and pushed users towards its own browser.

If the company dominating their hardware did any better, maybe the majority of them wouldn't leave Safari. If Apple doesn't want to build a competitive browser, then they need some (non-anticompetitive) strategy to retain their users. Otherwise we're doing the Microsoft Shuffle again.

> Where by "feature-filled" you mean "all the Chrome-only non-standards because free market or something"

No, at this point I really do just mean "feature-filled". iOS has notoriously restrictive APIs and it makes full sense that those users would want a browser do do the things Apple prevents their iPhone from doing natively. At the rate Apple's heading, I wouldn't be surprised if next-gen iPhone apps were just PWAs that hook into WebGPU. Big-business has no reason to keep living under Apple's thumb, and market regulators can't justify it in Europe, Japan or even the United States.

[troupo]

> If the company dominating their hardware did any better

Apple doesn't dominate all of hardware. Google, however, dominates major access points to the internet, and used it to aggressively promote its browser.

> No, at this point I really do just mean "feature-filled".

I doubt it

> iOS has notoriously restrictive APIs and it makes full sense that those users would want a browser do do the things Apple prevents their iPhone from doing natively.

Ah. So you are talking about Google-only non-standards

> I wouldn't be surprised if next-gen iPhone apps were just PWAs that hook into WebGPU

Android has been the dominant OS for over a decade now. It has no real or perceived limitations of iOS. We've yet to see a single amazing PWA future we hear so much about.

[mastercheif]

Orion Browser includes experimental Firefox extension support on iOS https://kagi.com/orion/

[eitland]

And it works really well from what I see.

Although Orion also has built in a (simpler) implementation the most important Firefox for me and I assume many others, tree style tabs. Orions built in version doesn't have the full customizability from TST but it works and presents tabs nested by what tab the descend from which is the most important feature.

[jampekka]

> Safari has saved Firefox and other browsers by being the only option on iOS for a long time

Amazing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)

[eitland]

Hehe.

But more seriously: it is actually the truth.

Kind of in in the same way that people are thankful for Churchill: not because he was a fantastic man in every way (he wasn't) but because he saved us from something even worse.

[talldayo]

> But more seriously: it is actually the truth.

If you have to convince people that you are seriously telling the truth, you are probably making an unproven assertion that relies on many benefits of the doubt.

[jampekka]

Big Brother keeps Oceania safe from Eurasia and Eastasia. And especially from Emmanuel Goldstein.

[josephd79]

I thought the other browsers on IOS were just skins of webkit / safari ?

[freehorse]

Yes, and the commenter claims that in this context this is actually good because it halted chrome/chromium's dominance in the internet (and I actually agree). It may sound paradoxical, but context is important imo.

[eitland]

That is to a large degree correct.

I even thought it wasn't necessary to test them separately but I recently heard from someone with more and more recent experience that some differences exist, particularly around prefixed css attributes. Can't say for sure though, but that was why I wrote my comment above somewhat defensively.

[soundnote]

EU law does force them to advertise alternative search engines. I just updated Chrome on my work laptop and they gave me a slate of search engines. My Chrome defaults to Brave Search now.