...because Chrome is a much better browser? That's what you're trying to say?
This is not theoretical, the playbook is obvious and has been run before, by Microsoft.
You're now demanding to be forever locked into an inferior corporate owned product because you're utterly afraid that the better product would win. It's insane.
Some of us are not. Some of us are saying "now is the wrong time to force Apple to open up its platform to other browsers". Safari on iOS is the one browser holding back Chrome from a monopoly for now. If you really want to see an open web, a more diverse web ecosystem, we have to expand the use of _other_ browsers such that there are again multiple, successful engines at the W3C; so that Google can't lock users out of their tools by forcing them to use Chrome. Only then will it be the right time to go after Apple's browser restrictions.
As for walled monopoly - what if Apple allowed Firefox with its free extension model - what argument would you come up then? One can easily use ublock origin with Firefox, a thing Apple fears quite a bit - its by far the best ad-blocking and to certain extent tracking technology out there currently. We all know here on HN that Apple is moving to marketing more and more (currently 4 billion/year for them and growing fast), so they will never allow this unless forced by law.
Which is one of those situations where users lose and corporation wins (unless you consider ads and tracking a good thing when Apple does it, but that's... illogical to be polite).
It can’t be that afraid, because you can use the Firefox version of uBlock Origin in the WebKit-based iOS browser Orion[0] right now.
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...
Extensions, as originally implemented, are a security nightmare. That's why every browser, including Firefox, is changing the way extensions work. Firefox is keeping blocking WebRequest specifically for ad blocking, but acknowledges the security risk. Apple and Chrome are removing it, which breaks uBlock Origin.
Ironically you don't need to look any further than extensions to see the impact of giving the entire web to Chrome. Firefox said they have to implement Manifest v3 because "support for MV3, by virtue of the combined share of Chromium-based browsers, will be a de facto standard for browser extensions in the foreseeable future." Imagine what Firefox would need to do if Chrome was the only other browser, with near-total market share.
The situation is not “Apple good, Google bad” or vice versa. The benefit of the current situation is that places these two huge companies in direct opposition and competition in the browser space. Using the law to force Apple to lose would take that away and cede the entire Web to Google’s control, thereby actually creating a monopoly.
What a bullshit statement that has no basis in reality. I wish high-visibility "thought leaders" would stop spewing this bullshit (but they won't)
Safari is definitely not choking the web platform to death. It's as lively as ever.
What you want is a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards that both Safari and Mozilla vehemently oppose to, and a smattering of other bullshit features under the PWA banner that are coming to the next versions of Safari.
Android and Windows make up four times the number of web users as iOS. That's almost the same ratio (Chrome:others) as browser use across the web. Get a significant proportion of those user to move onto to other browser platforms first, then go after Apple give the final 20% of users more choice.
(based on stats from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... )