zlacker

I feel 2 ways about this. If Apple is forced to open up, Chrome will take everything. If Apple can keep Safari in place, there are at least 2 browsers. OTOH, it’s a crap thing to do to your customers, forcing a browser on them.

>>BirAda+(OP)
Safari still has very good market share on MacOS so I don't think that is true.

Additionally while Safari remains underfunded and full of bugs it's not placing little competitive pressure on Chrome while ensuring that browsers that actually compete like Firefox are starved of search engine revenue.

Apple's position is bad for the Web, bad for Web Apps and bad for Safari. If they have competition then Apple will be forced to fund Safari/Webkit properly and deliver a reliable/feature rich browser.

>>BirAda+(OP)
Apple customers don't care. They have money to burn on a luxury good, and the apple cult is just like the Tesla cult. People cannot physically hear the criticisms.

There will be no consequences.

>>BirAda+(OP)
I used to feel like this, however I think it's more important for consumers to have choice on this rather than not.

I've come to the conclusion that competition is the only way to solve the issues around Safari not supporting all PWA features. Even if that result is a greater move to a Blink as the dominant engine.

>>samwil+d1
There are no cross-platform WebKit based browsers anymore anyway. When QtWebKit was eliminated, the last remaining ones switched to QtWebEngine (Blink/Chromium).

For there to be effective competition, there needs to be WebKit based browsers on all platforms (Windows, Android, macOS, Linux, iOS). Otherwise, it's a non-starter.

>>BirAda+(OP)
> If Apple is forced to open up, Chrome will take everything.

This won't happen. The platform default is one of the most decisive factor for the market share and Apple has a full control here. Unless they do a critical mistake at IE6 level, Chrome won't likely have above 10% iOS market share.

>>BirAda+(OP)
Apple should be forced to show users a screen where they select the browser they want to install when purchasing or upgrading iOS. There are more browsers than Safari and Chrome.

>>cactus+Ri
For god's sake NO, that would be the final nail in the coffin of Google owning web standards. 99% of users would choose Chrome because it's what they recognize most, and I assume in this scenario you're imagining this is actually different browsers using their own rendering engines.

I don't understand why in this world of Google's near monopoly on the web, people are more focused on government intervention to prevent Apple's pithy 9% marketshare for holding back poor Google.

>>hbn+gq
Not necessarily. If Brave can somehow present that it blocks ads and trackers many users will choose it over Chrome.

>>summer+Wb
> The platform default is one of the most decisive factor for the market share

That statement is much, much less true than it once was -- some quick searching puts Chrome at about 66% of desktop market share (despite neither of the two dominant desktop OSes shipping Chrome as a default), and the two default options (Chromium-based Edge and Safari) combining for about 25% of desktop market share.

>>ascagn+Ux
That's because MS made a irrrcoverable level of mistake over a decade. They wanted IE6 to die in favor of their proprietary platform.

Apple did learn from this mistake and kept a minimal level of investment as well as prohibited competition via full control of App Store, which effectively forced most websites to support WebKit. Even though they did not invest that much on Safari over a similar length of period through these ways and still maintains the lead on MacOS. Which in fact proves my point.

>>hbn+gq
While we're wishing for things that won't happen, Google should also be forced to divest Chrome.

>>cactus+uw
Google will be able to change standards very quickly to their licking and change their websites (google search, youtube, etc.) to only work with their browsers effectively killing any competition.

>>FinnKu+Ey1
Brave has blocked YouTube ads for years.

>>cactus+1G1
Brave relies on Google for browser engineering.