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Comment by rejhgadellaa | Hacker News Reader

> Mobile safari is arguably the only thing standing between Google and total browser dominance

"Apple Is Not Defending Browser Engine Choice"

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

You seem to be conflating my opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice has the consequence of preventing Chromium from achieving total dominance" with some imaginary other person's opinion of "iOS's lack of browser choice is a benevolent act where good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web". I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't. (Not purely because Firefox is technically inferior, mind you; products don't compete purely on technical merit.)

I think Chromium out-competing every other browser engine is a bad thing.

> I think Chromium out-competing every other browser engine is a bad thing.

Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to. They have the money, they have the marketing chops, they have the incentive ($20B search engine deal) and they are the default browser.

(also, they have trained iOS users that Safari is the only default browser on iOS for 14 yrs by not allowing other browsers to be set as the default)

All Apple has to do is actually compete, not just rely on their monopoly.

I mean, keeping one monopoly at bay (Chromium) with the other (WebKit requirement) isn't really how this is supposed to work, right?

> Hmm. I believe that Apple can compete with Google if they want to.

I don't think that would happen. I don't have much faith in Apple's abilities in this area, and their incentives are structured such that the less viable web apps are as a replacement to native apps, the more money they get from their 30% cut.

Again, your arguments would make sense if my opinion was: "good guy Apple valiantly defends the open web from Google out of the goodness of their hearts". But that isn't my argument. I don't care whether Apple could compete with Google if they tried. I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't.

> I mean, keeping one monopoly at bay (Chromium) with the other (WebKit requirement) isn't really how this is supposed to work, right?

WebKit isn't a browser monopoly, it has less than 20% of the browser market share. That 20% share is big enough to push web developers towards making websites work in browsers other than Chromium, but it's not big enough that there's a danger of web developers thinking, "everyone uses WebKit anyway so we won't bother testing on anything else".

Sure, it's a monopoly on iOS, but I don't see how this is relevant to my argument. The web is more important to me than iOS is.

> I care whether Apple would compete with Google, and they wouldn't.

They receive $20B a year from Google (search engine deal). Some estimates put WebKit/Safari's budget at $500M. That's a rounding error away from $20B of pure profits. I completely agree that Apple is not in it for the good of the web. They are in it for $20B a year.

And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up. Make room for browsers that do want to compete (or at least, let them try).

> WebKit isn't a browser monopoly, it has less than 20% of the browser market share.

That monopoly on iOS is enough, though. The web has to work on iOS because the wealthiest users have an iPhone, and all they have is WebKit. I work at a place where most of our users are on mobile, and most of them are on iOS. So WebKit sets the bar for what we can do. In other words, Apple is in full control of what we are able to do. Building features for Android users is often not worth our time and money, so we just don't build it.

> And even if they wouldn't want to compete: fine. Let them give up.

Again, this leads to Chromium out-competing everything else and getting as entrenched in mobile as it already is in desktop. This is a bad outcome.

> I work at a place where most of our users are on mobile, and most of them are on iOS. So WebKit sets the bar for what we can do.

In other words, Apple has successfully prevented you from writing a web application which only works in Chromium. This is a good outcome.

> In other words, Apple has successfully prevented you from writing a web application

... by abusing their monopoly position on iOS (instead of competing).

Good outcome?

From the perspective of avoiding a web that's wholly controlled by Google? Yeah, absolutely.

Letting my users have access to the Web Bluetooth API is not making Google somehow take control of the web. If Apple won't implement it, and they won't allow other browsers on their platform, that's plainly an abusive business tactic. It's far worse than what Microsoft did by simply include IE with Windows - Microsoft never forced every browser application to use Internet Explorer. Can you imagine the outrage if they did??

But somehow Apple gets a pass, and you think they're somehow saving the web? Just stop.

Apple is stifling progress in favor of profit.

You're shadow boxing. I never said Apple isn't engaging in abusive business tactics. They clearly are. I just think the result benefits the open web by taking power away from Google.

And I pointed out that they don't help the open web, they stifle innovation of the web by abusing their power for profit.

Which I think is far worse than anything you think Google is trying to do.

I'm not giving Google a free pass here, sure they can be abusive, I hated "AMP" and I'm glad it got thrown on the junk pile. That was clearly abusive. But implementing Web Bluetooth? Not abusive, it's progress. And it's too bad Apple abuses their power and stifles progress in this case.

I can't say anything other than "I disagree"; I think it does help the open web. You already admitted that you in your day job has been forced to make your site work in non-Chromium browsers thanks to Apple's authoritarian stance. That's a purely good outcome in my book, as much as I dislike the lack of user freedom that's behind it.

>You already admitted that you in your day job has been forced to make your site work in non-Chromium browsers thanks to Apple's authoritarian stance.

I did not say that at all. I'm not supporting iOS at all for the features that Apple won't implement in Safari. Tough titties Apple users. And why should I? iOS and MacOS world-wide are a small percentage of all users. And Apple doesn't care what their users don't get to access, so long as Apple is making money.

Apple is not the good guy here.

They are actually doing the opposite of you want, not sure how you can't see that. "The web" is now essentially all Apple will allow it to be, for their own greedy reasons.

I don't think it does benefit the open web. If consumers can't get value from the web, they'll go where they can find it. That is currently native apps, which is a closed and proprietary ecosystem. This causes the market itself to shrink, which means fewer and fewer people will invest in the web [1].

Here's a good podcast episode with people from the Open Web Advocacy: https://changelog.com/jsparty/316

> I do, frankly, think that mobile Safari couldn't compete that well in an open market, just like desktop Firefox can't.

Couldn't compete isn't a justification to exploit platform control and ban competition. If Apple's so worried that Safari usage will fall off in favor of Chrome, then they can invest in Safari to make it a level playing field to keep their user base.

[1] https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/

Let Google dominate the web. If that’s a problem we can sort that out. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

> Let Google dominate the web

No thanks

Indeed, that would be a disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Fix their dominant position through legislation, not with more monopolies and anticompetitive behavior.

I can do neither, actually. I can merely observe reality as it is and look at which forces affect the direction of the world. And right now, I observe a reality where one of the most significant forces which counteract a completely Chromium dominated web is Apple's user-hostile insistence on preventing browser engine competition on iOS.

I have very little faith in a legislative solution here since I believe politicians care about browsers, not browser engines. They see Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Edge and Opera and see a diverse marketplace with sufficient browser competition. They don't seem to care about the technical monoculture behind it all.

Apple doesn't even make Safari for the world's dominant platforms - Windows and Android, yet they continue to hold back progress in web browsers on all platforms to protect their own profit on their walled-garden platform.

They need to wrap up the DOJ lawsuit against Apple, but I fear the current administration will look the other way because "Tim Apple" gave the guy in charge a golden trophy. I wish I were joking.

As the ball of mud that is web standards grows, the less likely that it becomes that things can “sort themselves out”. Even as things are you need a literal army of developers to build and maintain a modern standards compliant browser, making any real threat to Chromium dominance unlikely, and that only intensifies as Google rolls ever more crap into the katamari. If users can then be harassed into switching to Chromium based browsers it’s likely that it will never be toppled short of some new technology superseding the web entirely.

If Google abusing it’s dominant position in web browsers is a problem then the solution is legislation and anti trust action. Letting Apple abuse its own position because it currently provides benefit is not a good approach.

Same thing played out with ads and tracking a few years ago, and now look at the ads situation in the App Store.

Do you remember Internet Explorer before Edge? Jeez I never want to go back to that. And that’s what we’d end up with in a browser monoculture.

Fix their dominant position through legislation, not with more monopolies and anticompetitive behavior.

Are you talking about Google or Apple? Because Apple is being sued by the DOJ for monopolistic and anticompetitive behavior. There are numerous examples of it spelled out in the lawsuit:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

Both of them. To the extent that Google uses their position with chrome to give themselves in another domain they should be sued. Likewise, Apple refusing to allow consumers to install whatever applications they want on their own devices is so egregiously anticompetitive.

In their wildest of wet dreams Microsoft didn’t imagine they could get away with what Apple is getting away with.

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