Awash in revisionist histories about Apple's web efforts, a look at the evidence
infrequently.org
infrequently.org
My fundamental problem with this author is his massive conflict of interest. He's not an outside observer but rather a Chromium engineer, former Google employee, current Microsoft employee. He talks about "competition" and "competitors" while basically ignoring the monopolistic landscape of the industry and the role of his own employers in that monopolization. Nobody has clean hands here, not Apple, not Google, not Microsoft. I don't see any of them really acting in the best interest of consumers. Let's not pretend, for example, that Chromium doesn't push a bunch of shit that consumers never wanted.
Progress would be breaking up this triopoly, not allowing Blink/Chromium to dominate everything.
The web "standards" bodies are a joke now because of the dominance of these few companies over web browsers. I don't even want to hear about standards anymore. So-called standards now are just the monopolists coming to agreement among themselves. All we have here is the employee of one monopolist complaining about another monopolist.
As far as I'm concerned, the web standards should be so simple that a little indie developer could write a full-fledged web browser. But people like the article author want web browser engines to become entire operating systems, which in effect excludes almost everyone from writing a web browser. That's not openness and freedom. It's inherently monopolistic.
The fact is, all three major browser implementations are open-source and that has allowed any company to come in and release or embed their own browser with minimal effort. Chrome/Blink is dominant but that is not due to technical barriers that make it difficult for other companies to ship their own browsers. In fact it is now easier than ever to do so.
IMO that's a major problem.
> The fact is, all three major browser implementations are open-source and that has allowed any company to come in and release or embed their own browser with minimal effort.
And they're all beholden to Google's decisions, for example to wreck the web browser extension API. Of course you can fork the code, but forks become increasingly difficult to maintain as they diverge significantly from the original code. Google can make things extremely difficult for forks.
Ladybird is doing a great job so far:
2. Super-simple engines that any indie can solo-code means disregarding 95% of feature demands by web developers (your audience, remember?), even basic things like encryption, video/audio streaming, chatting, conferencing, that users (your "actual" audience) expects and demands. It means killing basically every part of the web that isn't text documents, which means turning everything else into native apps beholden to their own monopolies, that are mostly crappy (contractor-made, less sandboxed/secure than on the current web). That's also nonsensical, if your objective is "consumers". And it means making every company's revenue dependent on Apple/Google/MS instead of a web domain they control.
Really you should examine your assumptions and logic far more thoroughly.
How is market share relevant?
What would be wrong with designing simple web standards and as a result having 1000 options each with 0.1% market share?
> Super-simple engines that any indie can solo-code
This is a straw man.
> video/audio streaming
There used to be browser plugins for things like this.
> web developers (your audience, remember?)
> users (your "actual" audience)
Which is it?
Catering almost exclusively to web developers, as the browsers have done, unfortunately, is not in the best interest of web users.
> native apps beholden to their own monopolies, that are mostly crappy (contractor-made, less sandboxed/secure than on the current web)
This is false.
> And it means making every company's revenue dependent on Apple/Google/MS
This is true regardless, native or web.
And people like the article author like to claim that Apple is forcing companies to write native apps, but notice that on Android, where there are alternative web browser engines, these same companies still write native apps. That's not because WebKit is bad, because WebKit is irrelevant on Android. Rather, it's because smartphone browsing is generally inconvenient and also native apps offer some inherent advantages over web pages.
To be clear, monopolies are bad, both for operating systems and for web browsers. But turning web browsers into operating systems won't break the current monopolies, because it's the same companies in either case.
The unfettered market has failed. We really need democratic governments to break up the monopolies. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen.
> instead of a web domain they control.
Do you even "control" a web domain? Web browsers can throw scary warnings over http and force you to adopt https certificates. Then the web browsers can decided which certificate vendors to trust or distrust. And all the web browsers have so-called "safe browsing" that can arbitrarily decide, with no warning and no resource, that your domain is unsafe.
> turning web browsers into operating systems won't break the current monopolies, because it's the same companies in either case
False. Linux is a perfectly great mainstream desktop option thanks largely to web apps (+Electron). Basically everything's available. How incredible is that? Or swap Linux with any other alternative.
The fact is you can make an indie engine right now. It won't support most of the web, but then again you don't want any of that to exist because of the additional barriers to entry for engines. So what's the problem? Make it.
In your world, somehow every platform vendor stops making web browsers, and we might have a bunch of browsers with 0.1% marketshare. How? Ludicrous. And proprietary browser plugins, really? So you're not looking to reduce complexity after all, then?
Again I don't think you've thought it through.
I talked about two different things, (1) what is and (2) what should be.
(1) "The web standards bodies are a joke now because of the dominance of these few companies over web browsers". (2) "the web standards should be so simple that a little indie developer could write a full-fledged web browser."
You appear to be criticizing (2) by assuming (1), but (1) is the opposite of (2). The latter is an ideal, not the sad reality.
> Linux is a perfectly great mainstream desktop option
Linux is not a mainstream desktop option, because consumers can't walk into a computer retailer and buy a desktop running Linux. That's why Linux has a practically nonexistent consumer market share.
Of course techies can run Linux, though I wouldn't call Electron apps "great" by any measure.
> In your world, somehow every platform vendor stops making web browsers, and we might have a bunch of browsers with 0.1% marketshare. How? Ludicrous.
It was purely a hypothetical scenario. The point of the hypothetical scenario was to explain why market share shouldn't be relevant to standards (as I also explained at the beginning of this comment).
> And proprietary browser plugins, really?
They were in fact not all proprietary and are not necessarily proprietary.
What's wrong with modularity? Some software vendors can specialize in HTML/CSS, some in video, etc.
> Again I don't think you've thought it through.
You can disagree with me, but these continuing, unnecessary, personal, condescending comments are in violation of the HN guidelines. Please stop.
I don't know how a discussion about browser engines ended up here, but please don't comment like this, no matter who or what you're responding to. You're a longtime user whom we've not had to warn for several years, but we need everyone to avoid behaving like this on HN. Longtime users should be the ones to de-escalate heated discussions and raise the standards on HN, not drag them downward.
Such a market works for cars (kinda), vacuum cleaners, hifi, golf clubs, burgers, synthesisers, sofas, buildings, DIY tools, dresses, shoes.
We also had more browsers back in the 00s, and into the early '10s.
So, yes. Really.
Maybe they haven't lived through the world of pain that was Silverlight, Flash and Java Applets et al. I suppose from a more innocent position without any history it might seem like a good idea to break complexity out into little modules, but the reality was poor integration, more platform lockin, and a security nightmare.
> This is far from the Hacker News caricature of "letting any web page talk to all of your USB devices."
The author is a meretricious liar. OSes do not randomly download code and run it. More importantly, unlike the author's employers (google and microsoft), they are not in the habit of allowing randoms to pay 1/1000 of a cent per install to run their spyware if you don't use adblock.
Nobody comparing what code gets run on an OS to what code gets run in a browser (eg every time you load a web page) is operating in anything approaching good faith. The risk exposures are nothing alike.
All of the main contributors have corporate interest and are not acting out of the goodness of their hearts, yes. But Apple's level of anti competitive, vertically integrated, gaslighting bullshit goes above and beyond.
This is disputable.
> does not get a free pass just because the world is not perfect.
Nobody is giving Apple a "free pass". I started by saying literally, "I have no wish to defend Apple." I also said, "Nobody has clean hands here, not Apple".
> But Apple's level of anti competitive, vertically integrated, gaslighting bullshit goes above and beyond.
I would note that the US Department of Justice is currently pursuing two monopoly cases against Google and suggested that Google should divest Chrome.
It really isn't. This has been argued to death, this is the point of this article (to provide data) because so many people (fans or not) buy into Apple's marketing, token browser feature releases and virtue signalling. They even have the cheek to boast about Safari's a11y feature releases while simultaneously ignoring long standing bugs that have broken overall a11y experience for years. To anyone on the ground who's been making web content and apps for a decade its clear as day, for everyone else Apple has done a good job of making it very unclear what's going on.
> Nobody is giving Apple a "free pass". I started by saying literally, "I have no wish to defend Apple." I also said, "Nobody has clean hands here, not Apple".
Yes, then go on to describe and focus on a "monopolistic landscape", and paint a picture where Apple is just another generic, monopolistic, self serving player - while completely ignoring the reality of the affect those individual players have on the web - which the article actually does investigate, but you would rather discount it's evidence because the author is involved enough in the ecosystem to have insight and form a strong opinion.
In summary you seem to be rejecting an evidence based argument (but not due to it's evidence), in favour of a philosophical perspective, entirely in the abstract, absent of detail, that equalises responsibility. To me that feels like giving Apple a pretty big free pass.
> I would note that the US Department of Justice is currently pursuing two monopoly cases against Google and suggested that Google should divest Chrome.
Yes, and I would agree, but that does not negate the reality of Apple's far worse affects on the web. I (also) don't want to defend any of them, but if you want to get philosophical, Google's monopoly is more aligned with the interest of web users', yes they will try to throw anti user and anti-competitive things in there (and they should be shamed for that), but they have also done a ton of work to move the platform forward, not out of the goodness of their heart, but that's the reality. Compare that to Apple's business, which is not aligned with the interest of web users', quite the opposite. Both companies manipulate the web in ways that benefit their business, it just happens that Apple's is so negatively aligned with the web that they do so through inaction while anti-competitively blocking other vendors, and blocking standards progression.
I disagree, and it appears that you're approaching this mainly from the perspective of web developers, whose interests are not necessarily aligned with web users either. In fact, web developers nowadays are notoriously user-hostile.
As a web user, I'm perfectly fine with continuing to miss many of the features that the article author believes are "missing".
That's... largely what standards are?? And they are really beneficial??
The reason I think things are more locked down in apps/silos on mobile is part of a general trend to restrict more and more what people can do with their stuff.
See Microsoft requiring an online account to use Windows. UEFI. DVD/Blu-ray players not allowing you to skip ads. Nintendo being able to brick your Switch remotely. Cars sending your driving data to insurance companies.
This was wildly exaggerated; Switches cannot be bricked remotely. Nintendo can ban you from online services, but that has been around... for decades.
The warning in the Terms of Service is saying that if you use unauthorized tools, there's no guarantee of compatibility. Updates as far back as the Wii had this warning.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...
https://consumerrights.wiki/index.php?title=Nintendo%27s_May...
It's hard to feel sympathetic when literally everything above is illegal anyway, under the CFAA and DMCA. To me, this is a "we could brick your console if you do illegal stuff," which is nothing new (you can't steal an iPhone without Apple bricking it). This is also, presumably, why Nintendo believes they can get away with it - there's no way you can possibly sue without exposing yourself.
Also, note that this specifically targets Nintendo Account Services. This isn't you casually modding or even cheating; this is you hacking your console, and then using that entry point (your console's unique authentication certificates) to try and get into Nintendo's infrastructure. Even the people hacking Switch 1 knew that if you probe the CDN in a way even slightly unusual, you get permanently banned instantly.
I'm not saying I like it; I'm saying that it's irrelevant to any decent customer who isn't planning to be taking inventory of Nintendo's online endpoints.
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/24481/whi...
We're arguably in a better place than we used to be, in some respects. Consider the Capcom CPS2 - an arcade cabinet that self-destructs when the battery expires or is removed for any reason. Now that's unthinkable and actually anti-consumer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP_System_II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCtXZM8iG-o&pp=ygULQ2FwY29tI...
My point is... the Nintendo Switch 2 doesn't really stand out as exceptional in any regard compared to historical practices that we culturally already accepted.
Nintendo switch 2 is a consumer product.
AFAICT, Nintendo can't brick GameCube, N64, SNES, NES, Gameboy etc. remotely.
Dead proposal, two years ago.
> Blocks sign-ins from 'embedded browsers'
I would too; browser automation tools are a spam farm's favorite tool.
> Encrypted Media Extensions API along with proprietary Content Decryption Module
Previously it was just called Silverlight and Flash. The demand isn't going away; but EME+CDM is definitely more open than it used to be.
How much of that is Google not allowing you to run uBlock origin on mobile Chrome?
The web without access to block lists (not just ads, but also others like annoyances) is practically unusable, especially on mobile.
False.
You appear to be referring to https://infrequently.org/2024/10/platforms-are-competitions/ which itself refers to https://www.emarketer.com/content/the-majority-of-americans-...
According to the survey, people spend on average almost a half hour per day in mobile web browsers, and that percentage remained steady over the surveyed period. That's not "practically no time", and furthermore, if Apple Safari is supposedly falling behind, that hasn't caused a noticeable decrease in the time spent web browsing.
It is true that the time spent using mobile apps (including games) has been increasing. Whether that's good, bad, or neutral is subject to debate. But it's not clear why this is inherently worse than spending time in a web browser. Note also that the survey does not distinguish between iOS and Android.
Also, as the article notes, "our figures may undercount time in embedded mobile browsers, such as those within Facebook or Twitter."
For that matter, what critical new functionality has been introduced in the web standards/specifications over the last 20 years that was not possible to implement prior? My quick and uninformed take is just: video.
As a casual web developer, it feels very much like the CSS, HTML, and Web API specifications are well well beyond what is critical and deep into the "specifications capture" phase of how companies compete.
Wasm, 3D acceleration, PWA, geolocalisation, USB access, sandboxed local storage and offline mode, accelerometer and touch support.
If one thing, the web has declined in the past decade with a lot of things which could and should be on the web moving to phone apps where gatekeepers can take their toll because phone browsers are gimped.
By not supporting these, one is forced to make a native app in many cases. With support for some of these standards, entire classes of application could be delivered via cross platform web applications. Imagine being able to install firmware updates on USB devices just by visiting the manufacturers website, for one.
While we can argue about safety, the file system access problem can be solved in the exact same way apple solved it for native apps, with permission dialogs etc and only exposing the selected items when attempting to access resources on the device. This is indeed the approach Chrome/Edge use today.
If you look at the browser API specs Apple has chosen not to implement and Chrome/Edge has historically, it's hard not to feel Apple is trying to protect its own native app store at times. There are obvious self-interested reasons for Apple to protect it's own store/native app system; even "free" applications often generate revenue from in-app purchase transaction fees or subscriptions. If developers can more easily avoid shipping a native app, they can also more easily avoid paying Apple fees.
https://infrequently.org/2025/09/standards-and-the-fall-of-i...
- sent from my iPhone
Windows even asks you if you want to use something else other than Chrome if you're in the EU.
And not by choice. It was a 2010 legal decision. Pretty confident that if the court didn't force Microsoft to do it they wouldn't give you that option.
It will seem odd to most, but my big concerns about Chrome relate to Android and ChromeOS. In neither environment did Chrome win share competitively. I think this has made them weaker and less useful, and that was mirrored in the tremendous difficulty we had in getting expansions of web capabilities done within the Chrome team, nevermind what I am documenting in this most recent post.
Sadly, the CrOS problem will be partially resolved when Google trashes it with Android rebasing in upcoming releases. On the Android side, Google is still withholding WebAPK support from competitors (suppressing PWAs on Android) and has failed to follow Apple's lead on hotseat browser replacement when choice screens are shown in the EU.
But neither of the bad effects are nearly as structural or impactful as Apple's out-and-out suppression of the web on mobile, because wealthy people carry iPhones and they have all the power:
https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-crimes-against-the-i...