[agust]

So after the EU and the UK, Japan is now putting an end to Apple's iOS alternative browser engine ban too.

Those are 3 large jurisdictions, I wonder if that's now a market big enough for Chrome and Firefox to invest into iOS versions of their browser that use Blink and Gecko under the hood. From what I heard this was one of the main reasons they haven't done it yet.

[Sayrus]

From the same website, there are still blocks put in place by Apple to discourage anyone, especially large browsers, from publishing their own engine: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-browser-engine-ban...

[fsflover]

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44557348

[ChocolateGod]

I thought in the UK, the government decided to only weakly enforce the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

[benoau]

Weakly might even be overstating it. Their roadmap has all this ambitious stuff like sideloading and competing app stores and allowing apps to link to their own payments, that they are aiming to have categorized into priority-buckets by the middle of next year. This could take the rest of the decade to actually be implemented on Apple's side.

[ChocolateGod]

The UK is kinda trying to balance both the US and EUs commercial interests when it comes to regulation right now

[immibis]

I thought it was because Apple still put so many roadblocks in the way of browser developers that nobody was able to pass them.

[agust]

Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs; developing a separate app for these markets and therefore loosing their existing userbase; and signing a pretty crazy contract, among other things.

But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.

[thewebguyd]

> Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs

TBH I'm fine with that. Applications, browsers or not, should use the operating system's components and APIs for things for a unified experience across all apps and interactions. On the desktop side of things, I hate when an application breaks convention for the OS it's deployed on. If I'm using macOS, for example, I want every app on my mac to look and behave like any other, consistent with the rest of the OS.

[cosmic_cheese]

I’d say it’s even more important on mobile than it is on desktop. Third parties re-implementing things like the keyboard and IMEs are unlikely to do those anywhere near as well as the OS does, not to mention how custom implementations would break password manager integration, user-selected third party keyboards, etc.

[criddell]

Don't expect Apple to just open the gates and say anything goes as far as the browser is concerned. Instead, look for an Apple build of Firefox and maybe an Apple build of Chrome that you will be able to install.

[a_vanderbilt]

Culturally, the Japanese aren't likely to care. Take a look at Linux usage in Japan to get what I mean. You will have a small but very dedicated group of users who won't change for anything, and then the masses who just use what is convenient. They don't like tweaking.

[nemomarx]

is Linux usage significant enough in any country to really make judgements about culture from?

[rs186]

Weird argument. Linux mostly operates in a completely different space (enterprise) from where iOS/Chrome (consumer electronics and technology) lives

[charcircuit]

I wonder if it would make more sense and be easier for Firefox to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS.

[reorder9695]

It'd probably be easier but not good, diversity in engines is good here. We don't want something like the IE monopoly again.

[charcircuit]

The issue that you bringing up was more of an issue of Microsoft thinking they were finished with the web and the lack of automatic updates. It was not due to lack of diversity of engines, but of market share of a single product. This is very different from having the dominant browser engine invested in the success of the web with automatic updates to ensure that the web platform is able to advance and not stagnate.

[lucasban]

As a counterpoint, this does make it so that one group has disproportionate power over what features make it into that engine, or how they are implemented. What if their incentives change over time and are no longer aligned with what we might consider the success of the web?

[charcircuit]

Then it can be forked because it's open source.

[cosmic_cheese]

The problem with forking Blink/Chromium is that in order to be able to counter Google, the organization maintaining the fork is going to need dev manpower on the order of Google’s to be able to keep up with upstream patches, which is prohibitively expensive for all but a handful of orgs (not to mention, skilled talent capable of working on web engines doesn’t grow on trees). Without that any fork that differs substantially from mainline is eventually doomed as the divergence grows and overwhelms the team.

[cosmic_cheese]

Monopolies are bad regardless. It’s similar to dictators — even if you have a “good” one that works in the interest of the people, that can all come crashing down and turn to despotism in an instant.

In the case of the web, it’s also bad for any single company to have as much influence as Google has on web standards development. There’s simply too much conflict of interest at play. As a web engine developer they should have some amount of sway but if any party is to have disproportionate power it’d be better if it were an org like Mozilla that’s more likely to give issues like privacy and potential for abuse greater consideration.

[Towaway69]

Hahaha - as a European there is already a monopoly, a US based monopoly. But that's really due to the compliancy of europeans tech industry.

[surajrmal]

Is it even worth investing in? It would require massive capital spend and the ongoing costs to stay afloat would be similarly high. There is little to no certainty to believe you could acquire users or a revenue model either. None of the chromium derivatives have managed to gain traction other than edge. It seems wiser to invest in the next platform rather than ones with big players already in the space.

[Towaway69]

Not really, that boat has sailed.

It was just funny reading an American suggesting that a monopoly in the browser space would be bad ;)

Also, as a European, I can also say that a monopoly in the social media space would be bad but there is always TikTok or are they French?!? /s

[immibis]

Today I was asked to give permission to transmit my personal data to Google Maps to view my train route. I wondered why they didn't use Open Street Maps. Systems exist, but the people with the money don't care to use them.

My new phone is full of many more libre apps than my old phone.

[troupo]

> to switch to Blink, working together with Google making an alternate browser engine for iOS.

How is switching to Blink, a Google-controlled engine, supposed to help creating an "alternative engine"?

[charcircuit]

Because Blink is an alternate engine to Webkit.

[troupo]

Fully controlled and developed by Google.

So what would Firefox (or anyone) gain by Firefox ditching their engine and helping Google?

[charcircuit]

I was suggesting Mozilla could help with the development. Firefox gains an engine that has a lot of other engineering hours being invested into it that can fulfill their needs.

[troupo]

Mozilla already has an engine with a lot of engineering hours invested in it and that fulfills their need.

How does helping Google maintain their dominance help Mozilla?

[jeroenhd]

AFAIK the main reason is that only the EU+UK cared about these rules and their market share is too small for companies like Google or Mozilla to invest into.

Because of the way the App Store works, browser engines segregated by region need to be two different apps. That means maintaining two source trees (EU+UK+JP vs worldwide) and two releases with two reviews.

I expect niche browsers to have a go at porting to iOS at some point (I'd love to see a project like Ladybird be the first non-Safari browser on the app store!) but for the major companies it seems like too much of a hassle at the moment.

[agust]

Yeah that's why the bigger the market they can reach with a version using their own engine, the more likely they are to invest into doing it.

Now the question is what's the threshold for this market to be big enough? Maybe Japan's joining in pushes it past that point.