zlacker

>>samwil+(OP)
> Apple will reportedly receive 20 billion USD for having Google as the default search engine. Presumably, this is why they are fighting so hard against having any meaningful competition on iOS.

Dizzying rent-seeking fees

>>ommz+td
It's also 20 billion Apple has to do almost nothing for, except ban the other browsers and set google as the default search engine in Safari. It's a significant proportion of their yearly profit.

>>mtomwe+Nd
This doesn’t make sense. There are other browsers on the App Store and, although they have to use Safari’s browser engine, they’re free to prioritise search engine preferences as they see fit.

>>steve_+ne
The real versions of Firefox, Chrome and Edge etc have been banned. Instead Apple forces them to create new browsers which use their controlled, locked and unmodifiable WebView removing the majority of the ways that these browsers can differentiate themselves while providing features exclusive to Safari (like the ability to install Web Apps).

This ensures that none of the "browsers" can compete on iOS and this obvious by comparing browser market share of the same browser between iOS and Android.

>>mtomwe+Se
To be precise, the thing that makes a browser meaningfully different (the engine, Firefox has Gecko, Chrome has Blink, Edge also uses Blink, although Blink is often identified as chromium) isn't allowed to exist on iOS.

As you say, Apple only allows their own WebView to exist on iOS, which is an engine they both control entirely and is heavily locked down. Not helping matters is that WebView runs on WebKit (Safari uses WebKit as well), which is these days pretty much the equivalent of Internet Explorer in terms of browser shenanigans[0].

The result is that the only real thing you get from Firefox/Chrome/Edge on iOS is access to your synchronized bookmarks. Apple doesn't offer any form of a WebExtension implementation either to these engines (instead rolling their own version, which they confusingly also call WebExtension), and none of the previously mentioned browsers are even allowed to add the universal form of WebExtension support to WebKit. The result is that iOS also remains one of the few platforms where meaningful adblocking remains a crapshoot (entirely beneficial to Apple of course).

[0]: To be somewhat fair here, WebKit *is* very useful for more embedded/low powered devices that aren't intended to access a lot of websites to begin with. There are some uses for WebKit, IE had none near the end.