Mozilla has a very web-centric view of the internet for obvious reasons. The survey they do here about people's reluctance to install browsers themselves is useful in that context.
But the web is not the internet. And every problem that Mozilla brings up in this report stems from them, and other browser developing corporations, treating web pages as applications instead of as documents.
The motivation to make the web an application platform is because the web is the only thing that could possibly displace Microsoft's stranglehold on non-server PC operating systems, and is the only workable alternative to apps on iOS.
The other half of the reason is that Web applications are way easier to deploy, even if 100% of your users are on Windows, because the second-order-effect of being locked-down is less gatekeeping and less scare screens. If a web app is able to see stuff that it hasn't been explicitly granted access to, that's considered the Browser's fault for allowing it instead of it being the User's fault for installing an untrusted app.
Hypermedia in general, and specifically the World Wide Web, was never intended to be limited to displaying documents. What you're describing is essentially just Hypertext, but that's only one narrow aspect of hypermedia and the Web.
Hypercard, NLS, and other systems that predated and informed the WWW were all envisioned to do so much more than display links and text, and it's a very myopic view in my opinion to suggest otherwise. I recommend anyone who shares this perspective look into the spiritual predecessors of the Web to better understand where we've been and where things are going.
Who cares about what was "intended" anyways? That ship has sailed! When a new technology is introduced, the intention is of no consequence; no one cares and they'll use it however they choose. The web is whatever we make it, and all we can do is try and direct it towards what we want it to be.
> every problem that Mozilla brings up in this report stems from them, and other browser developing corporations, treating web pages as applications instead of as documents.
What do you mean by this?
The problems they bring up essentially boil down to increasing user access to privacy, security, and new features. Locking people into default browsers put us back into the stagnant, horrible IE6 era.
The only thing I can figure out is you're saying if client-side scripting didn't exist, some of these would be less pressing. Which is true, but it does exist, so the choice is abolish/avoid it (good luck getting mass user adoption!), or deal with it.
> Mozilla has a very web-centric view of the internet for obvious reasons.
Which attitude I happen to find immensely frustrating because I think becoming a more all-inclusive Internet client, and especially combining services in interesting ways, would have been one viable path to maintaining relevance, differentiating themselves, and maintaining user-enthusiasm and evangelism, if they'd started 10-12 years ago.
The "web" is a joke. Other people here are taking issue with this comment, but there's a distinct truth to it. You can argue semantics, but web "browsers" were designed around navigating HTML. Now they are IDE's for runtime-compiled applications using HTML primitives, positioned by CSS, in place of an actual, useful, concrete widget system, like you get in Visual Basic. If this had been the development target for "browsers" 25 years ago, I wonder how much better we could have evolved this system than the morass of JS we have now, and all the problems that go with it.
Regardless of what it stands for (although it's always "operating systems"), grammatically speaking it should be OS's or something similar, not just "OS".
In the context of the title, I understood it as "operating systems". This may be due to a few things, but from grammar alone, "are" typically requires a plural noun, an "Open Sources" makes no sense, so if I was confused by "OS", the "Are" clued it into "Operating Systems" since the plural there makes a lot more sense.
"Why Browsers Are Essential to the Internet and How Operating Systems Are Holding Them Back"
"Why Browsers Are Essential to the Internet and How Open Sources Are Holding Them Back"
Not sure who would expect that. Usually open source is "OSS" (Open source software) "FOSS" (Free ...) or "FLOSS" (Free Libre ....). OS pretty much always has meant Operating System.
Looking and pointing at you iOS and Apple. It's unacceptable that other browser engines are forbidden on the phone or tablet YOU are supposed to own. Imagine Microsoft would do something like this...
Um, in my imagination, they did this very thing. They paid a slap on the wrist fine, were not monopolistically broken up, and have gone back towards doing the same thing.
From their position of power they don't need anymore to prevent users from installing other browsers; it's enough for them to continuously pester the user with annoying requests to make their own the default one until the user surrenders. For 99.999% of users, a browser that doesn't load by default and a browser that is not installed are essentially the same thing.
Any push back against allowing a user to do whatever the user wants is the same thing in my book. Microsoft has recently made it harder to use non-MS browsers.
If you want to play a game of semantics, then sure, point to you. If you want to just have a normal conversation about users doing what they want, then I'd say you're outside of the lines on that last shot.
They bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, and yes, they did some dirty tricks to try to keep users on IE rather than use alternate browsers. But "other browser engines are forbidden on the phone or tablet" was not something they did.
They still are not "doing the same thing" as that.
Yeah... this wasn't what actually got them in trouble and is a gross oversimplification. They were actively working against Netscape by making other browsers *not work* on the OS. It also wasn't standards-compliant and had all sorts of proprietary tech (VBScript, JScript, OCX, and MSHTML) that would only work with their browser
If the company supplies the hardware and software as a bundled unit, they are much more able to arbitrarily restrict and wall-in the device. It's just how the law works. This is how Apple seems to get away with a lot of super anti-competitive stuff that Microsoft simply could never with it's Windows OS (Microsoft being crucified for favoring IE being a prime example, while Apple blatantly does the same thing with Safari). That said, Microsoft can and does do all the same stuff on their Xbox or surface tablets, because in that case they do supply both the hardware and software. There's no "good" or "bad" company when it comes to this issue, as they both willing to do this in every scenario when they can get away with it.
Why it's structured this way, I've no idea. I don't think supplying the hardware should be the distinguishing factor that allows them to wall-in the device. It's one thing to force them to support and integrate devices/software into their product, which is probably not fair on the company, but it's another thing to actively get in the way. It's a thin line with a lot of grey area, but the way it's setup currently probably isn't right.
Are you sure it doesn't have something to do with Microsoft holding 80% of the desktop market at the time, while Apple only has 50% of the smartphone market now?
At 50%, do you start fudging numbers to ensure you go no higher? "No, Senator, we are not the majority of users, so we can't be a monopoly." Or maybe that's too immoral, so start funding the other(s) to prop them up? Microsoft propped up Apple to ensure there were other consumer OS makers with Apple being the most viable* competitor.
*viable is doing a lot of heavy lifting as they did need that propping up
> At 50%, do you start fudging numbers to ensure you go no higher?
I get why you wouldn't want to trust Apple's self-reported numbers, but why would Wikimedia [1] also report Android as being more popular than iOS? What do they get out of it?
1990s was a long time ago.. why would Microsoft do something like this? They're all in on Chromium and choice. When you change your default browser, its actually changing the default browser, not the skin with the forced widget inside.
yes it is a long time ago. And there was a big debate about Microsoft (including discussions of splitting up Microsoft because of bundling the browser). And Apple is doing things way beyond that for many years and nobody blinks an eye nowadays.
The issue is that Microsoft was using its market dominance to compel its OEM partners to include Internet Explorer and not include 3rd party browsers.
Apple is not forcing its OEM partners to exclude 3rd party browsers.
If Microsoft made its own hardware and packaged IE with its version of the OS sold on its hardware - there wouldn't be an issue.
The big difference is that Apple doesn't license its software to 3rd parties.
On the other hand, if Google were to compel its OEM partners to include software, then Google would likely be facing various government bodies that have issue with this process and possibly facing fines.
Apple has NO OEM. You can only buy completely integrated products period. The new M1s are SOCs, so there isn't even a 3rd party market unless you restrict that to USB and fashion accessories.
Microsoft does make its own hardware. The Surface line of products are pretty amazing. They didn't break any OEM 3rd party market nor dictate anything. In fact, they have a "signature system" policy for their first party hardware that it won't be full of bloatware like 3rd party OEMs used to do.
Google has slowly been destroying its 3rd parties and 3rd parties playing in its ecosystem have been moving towards forking for a while which is why there is always the complaint of unsupported devices after a single cycle there. (and so many community roms/hacks/installers floating around to address this)
That's the point. Except with some attempts back in the mid 90s, Apple hasn't licensed their software and have instead done a vertical integration of their products and are selling a product.
Tangent to this is that Safari isn't the dominant market browser in any space.
* Mobile worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/worldwide
* Desktop worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide
* Mobile US https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america
* Desktop US https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/united-states-of-america
One can't say that Apple's bundling of Safari within iOS is letting them abuse their market dominant position to force other companies to install software that they don't want to.
First time I'm hearing about 3rd parties being compelled. Realistically given the target audience, why wouldn't most 3rd parties take the easy way out and keep the pre-installed IE?
At some point Microsoft was forced to include a browser choice program on installation and it had marginal effects on the IE user base. Likewise, despite the heavy shilling, Edge can barely get a foot in. Realistically all that changed is we now have to boot Edge or IE to get another browser again (from average user PoV).
> 18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.
"Apple is not forcing its OEM partners to exclude 3rd party browsers."
Apple has OEM partners? :-)
Seriously, the lawsuit against Microsoft involved anti-competitive behavior, not anti-consumer behavior. In this case, other businesses have better legal protections than customers.
I believe that is because it is easier to show damages against a company where they can put a numeric value on it (and it is one company) rather than trying to wrangle a class action where the damages are more nebulous (if at all).
16. First, Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, test, and promote Internet Explorer, a product which it distributes without separate charge. As Paul Maritz, Microsoft's Group Vice President in charge of the Platforms Group, was quoted in the New York Times as telling industry executives: "We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free." As reported in the Financial Times, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates likewise warned Netscape (and other potential Microsoft challengers) in June 1996: "Our business model works even if all Internet software is free. . . . We are still selling operating systems. What does Netscape's business model look like? Not very good."
17. But Mr. Gates did not stop at free distribution. Rather, Microsoft purposefully set out to do whatever it took to make sure significant market participants distributed and used Internet Explorer instead of Netscape's browser -- including paying some customers to take IE and using its unique control over Windows to induce others to do so. For example, in seeking the support of Intuit, a significant application software developer, Mr. Gates was blunt, as he reported in a July 1996 internal e-mail:
I was quite frank with him [Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit] that if he had a favor we could do for him that would cost us something like $1M to do that in return for switching browsers in the next few months I would be open to doing that. (MS6 6007642).
18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.
19. Third, Microsoft intends now unlawfully to tie its Internet browser software to its new Windows 98 operating system, the successor to Windows 95. Microsoft has made clear that, unless restrained, it will continue to misuse its operating system monopoly to artificially exclude browser competition and deprive customers of a free choice between browsers.
------
You can go through these complaints (and the other three - down to paragraph 32) and ask "is Apple doing these things?"
Is apple going out and trying to squash Chrome on windows machines (remember, Microsoft released IE for OS 6 or was it 7?). Is Apple trying to call up Amazon and have them replace Chrome with Safari on their Kindle devices?
The things that Microsoft got in trouble with for its anti-competitive practices with IE are completely separate and distinct from the things that people accuse Apple with for being anti-consumer.
Apple has gotten their wrist slapped for being anti-competitive with books in the past.
I wouldn't say "completely separate"; they're doing the same things, but only on Apple's combined hardware/software. That apparently makes the situation very different.
Things like "Apple isn't providing a list of ISPs that promote iOS in a drop down in the default install" (paragraph 28) or trying to make companies switch from using Chrome to Safari (paragraph 17) or trying to get content providers to make safari specific alterations to their pages that wouldn't work in Chrome (paragraph 33).
Half of DOJ's case about anti-competitive behavior was about the activities that Microsoft took to try to force Netscape out of places through business pressure. Two of the other items were about OEM and licensing, and one was about bundling the browser into the next version of Windows.
While I agree with them about the blanket ban on alternative browser engines on iOS, when it comes to desktop, Microsoft did anti-competitive shenanigans back in the day too and yet Mozilla managed to still get a significant marketshare despite that.
Their secret at the time? Making an actually good browser that offered features the incumbent didn't have, something Mozilla has absolutely given up on in pursuit of making a Chrome lookalike, up to the point of removing certain features (that power users - their only marketshare at this point - very much miss) and even implementing arbitrary restrictions on the add-ons you can install on Android (you have to use a complex workaround to install unapproved ones). The thing is, people who want Chrome will just use the real thing and have no reason to use a slower lookalike with poor compatibility.
Here's an easy idea to sell Firefox on the desktop to the masses: built-in uBlock Origin, out of the box. Nobody I know that has tried an ad blocker ever switched back, and if they do fall for a dark pattern and switch back to an alternative browser, ads will be a persistent reminder telling them to go back to Firefox. Actually give non-technical users a real, tangible reason to use Firefox.
Yes, I agree with that. However, the rest of my comment talks about the desktop where the situation hasn't changed much from decades ago - the incumbents use anti-competitive tactics, but people can still install alternative browsers and may do so if you give them a tangible reason to do so, but the hypothesis is hard to prove because Mozilla isn't actually interested in giving the masses a tangible reason to use its browser over the incumbents'.
Google pays for an order of magnitude more engineers for Chrome. This is the only reason they're ahead of Firefox. They're doing this from an artificial law-breaking economy they built.
The same with Apple and their protectionist monopoly platform.
Both companies deserve DOJ slaps.
If you're a start-up founder, these companies are seeping you of the time and budget you need to succeed. They're unfairly sucking the air out of the economy for the rest of us.
Let's assume we live in a perfect world where Firefox has 100% compatibility-parity with Chrome.
Do you think Firefox would have a significant marketshare, and if so, why?
I don't see what out-of-the-box Firefox brings to a non-technical user compared to Chrome. Yes, it can be made significantly better than Chrome with specific configuration and add-ons like uBlock Origin, but non-technical users aren't aware of that and will not try (and those who are already use Firefox).
What exactly does Firefox lack in this regard? I'm curious. I've used it for years and the only noticeable difference to me is that it doesn't nag me about having a Google account.
Well it's not really that it lacks, but that it also doesn't have any compelling features (for the average user) to switch either.
When it comes to nagging, Firefox is unfortunately also quite bad, every major update it will find some bullshit to nag you about such as "colorways", Pocket or a VPN.
I usually “sell” Firefox along with uBlock Origin. You’re correct that out of the box functionality for Firefox isn’t super compelling, but regular users notice the improved browsing experience that comes with the blocker.
Why are you intentionally avoiding the question? Tell me why a non-technical user should prefer even a hypothetical, 100%-compatible Firefox over Chrome.
Remember that they are non-technical, they aren't aware of FOSS or the history of Mozilla and have no ideological reason to pick Firefox, so the decision has to be made purely on functionality.
What groundbreaking, relevant-to-the-average-user functionality (dev tools and advanced, off-by-default privacy options don't count) does Firefox have out of the box that Chrome doesn't?
I'm not avoiding your question - I'm pointing to why Chrome is in the lead.
If Chrome didn't have Google backing it and Apple didn't mandate Safari, Firefox would likely have significant market share.
This isn't a battle over functionality, it's monopolistic invasion of an open ecosystem by giants that control all of the ingress points. They're turning the entirety of the web itself into an ad/product funnel for giants.
I don't care if Mozilla wins. I just don't think the world is healthy with two OS/mobile/search vendors controlling every major piece of technology.
The technology sector will be healthier if these companies are forced to break up. There will be more competition and more innovation as less is spent fighting for the last 1% of growth.
Firefox usurped the then-incumbent IE6 despite all odds. Chrome can be usurped likewise.
Unfortunately for the Mozilla fanbois, though, Firefox won't be an usurper a second time because as already mentioned it's degenerated into simply a Chrome ripoff.
A new competitor can usurp the throne, but it needs to be a genuinely better product to do that and Firefox today is not a genuinely better product.
> I don't see what out-of-the-box Firefox brings to a non-technical user compared to Chrome.
Respecting privacy.
I urge non-technical people to switch to Firefox constantly. People understand, often cannot be bothered.
Times change and more and more people are realising that in the twenty first century we need to protect ourselves not so much government oppression as corporate dominance and surveillance. So they bother
Part of that is using Firefox. In my experience, people get it. Be they computer programmers or plumbers.
Firefox in its default configuration does nothing about privacy because just the IP address and user-agent are unique enough to track you. It may actually make it even worse because Firefox' marketshare is so small that the user-agent sticks out like a sore thumb.
You need uBlock Origin to have any chance at privacy.
Firefox these days includes a number of features which threaten user's privacy that must be disabled. Their biggest sins I think were forcing Pocket onto people by default, their new tab page, searching from the address bar, and prefetch.
Google is investing a lot in making websites run better on user computers, while protecting the users from malicious websites. This is a problem if you're trying to sell a browser. And an opportunity if you're trying to make a good website.
If Google was actually sucking air out of the ecosystem, all of the VCs would stop investing in websites because no money could be made. But they invest because Google isn't doing that, and there is a ton of air in the economy.
For a contrast, look at what happened to Windows applications in the 1990s. Microsoft really did suck the air out of the system. Startups really did die en masse. And VC stopped investing in Windows applications because your viable outcomes were fail, be bought out by Microsoft cheaply, or be wiped out by Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior. None of which made money for the VC.
> Google is investing a lot in making websites run better on user computers, while protecting the users from malicious websites. This is a problem if you're trying to sell a browser. And an opportunity if you're trying to make a good website.
Google is also investing a lot into gulping up large chunks of the market too, they're investing heavily into spying on user behavior and collecting as much info as possible. All in the name of improving usability.
Not saying only Google is the culprit here, all big players do it. What I am pointing out is that a lot of these are really hurting the user in the name of making things better for the user.
You're not wrong, but every thread about browsers like this turns into people armchair running mozilla and complaining about their personal pet peeves.
I don't disagree that there's probably things Mozilla could do better in their desktop browser.
I do think it's an off topic distraction in a comment thread sparked by a report of how operating systems are abusing their position to limit competition in web browsers.
What Apple is doing is not anticompetitive because they own the platform. Microsoft was anticompetitive because they wound up dictating what OEMs could or could not do with the platform they built. Not the same situation.
Your comment doesn't make sense. Apple "owns" the platform because... why, exactly? Because they build the software and the hardware? Or because you can only run software that they approve?
The PC OEMs didn't "build" a platform, they licensed Windows from Microsoft and that license contained anti-competitive clauses. Apple's restrictions on iOS are also anti-competitive, regardless of the fact that they also built the hardware.
Should McDonald's be able to tell their franchisees that they can't sell Whoppers? That seems like the more apt comparison, and put like that it's hard to see why Microsoft would be in the wrong.
The iOS situation is closer to Subway forbidding me from taking my food home and putting McDonald's sauce on it, even though I bought the damn sandwich.
In Microsoft's case, there is an entire world of software that only runs on Windows. There are a lot of circumstances where businesses and users simply don't have a choice to run an operating system other than Windows because so much of the software world is built around it.
There software that runs only on macOS, but nowhere near the extent of Windows. The overwhelming majority of people using a Mac have made a decision to use an Apple product. For most Windows users, this was never a choice.
MS lost the trial about IE and had to include a UI to allow switching the default[1] (1998-2001). Firefox v1 launched 3 yrs after that trial[2] (2004).
The idea that Firefox was able to get market share besides MS anti-competitive actions is incorrect. Firefox was better than IE in many areas, but the history will be different if users cannot switch the default browser.
If Mozilla bundled uBO into Firefox, I imagine they would lose Google as a search partner overnight, and tens of millions of dollars in funding as a result.
Google, an advertising company, pays for the vast majority of Firefox development in exchange for being the default search engine. Bundling an ad blocker with Firefox seems like a pretty bad idea in this situation.
And yet, Firefox is an antitrust fig leaf for chrome. EU regulators won't take kindly to Google having an effective monopoly on web browsers, all the more so since MS adopted the same browser engine. If the choices became chrome or WebKit, said regulators would likely be at least curious enough to look.
Look at where Firefox gets its funding and you’ll see why they might be reluctant to ship ad blocking on their flagship product.
Firefox does have Firefox Focus on mobile with built in ad blocking/tracker blocking. I use it all the time yet I’m still not sure whether it allows “acceptable” ads due to general ad blindness, though I know it doesn’t block everything (which could just be due to lack of community reports for that ad type, or something).
> Look at where Firefox gets its funding and you’ll see why they might be reluctant to ship ad blocking on their flagship product.
Great, then it means it's time to actually build a profitable business, or at least own up to their conflict of interest instead of blaming everyone for their inability to run a business without relying on handouts.
Seriously. It seems like the only "innovation" coming out of Mozilla these days involves finding new ways to complain about their marketshare dwindling that don't involve their browser being inferior to their major competitors in many ways.
I like Brave a lot, but their business model is not providing enough revenue to build a full web runtime + browser either since they are a Chrome fork.
Microsoft did anti-competitive shenanigans back in the day too
Did Microsoft do anything worse than bundling IE with Windows and integrating it into the file manager? Frankly Windows now is much worse than it was then, taking note of the hissy fit Windows 10/11 throws when you go to switch your default browser away from Edge.
> Microsoft did anti-competitive shenanigans back in the day too and yet Mozilla managed to still get a significant marketshare despite that
pretty easy to do when the incumbent barely worked on their browser for 5 years because they had a monopoly. i would assume no one would be as dumb as balmer to choke out their own monopoly position to save a few bucks
I understand why they don’t want to allow just any browser implementation from a security/user trust perspective. Even if technically it does nothing to make their device more secure, it really reduces their security surface area to only expose higher level primitives they control.
It’s not clear what they gain from allowing other engines because probably nobody is eschewing iOS/iPhone because of having to use webkit.
Apple could still easily introduce a very rigorous review process for browsers that would likely result in Chromium and maybe “actual” Firefox being approved. But, until a court forces them to, they don’t have any reason to create that headache for themselves.
They probably never expected to be able to get away with this for as long as they have.
> It’s not clear what they gain from allowing other engines
Apple gain nothing. That precisely why they don't do it. However, we all suffer from a web platform that gets held back by there being zero competition on iOS.
I'd wonder if EU antitrust laws could give them something to gain: namely, not being fined. There's a concept of market fairness in EU antitrust law that isn't present in the equivalent US rules, such that price is not the only consideration.
I'd be surprised if this couldn't be turned towards pushing for greater user choice as it was when MS was bundling internet explorer for years. If memory serves, it was competition law which was used to undo that.
I guess what I’m saying is that unless legislation or a court make Apple support other browsers, expect nothing. Apple won’t acquiesce just because technical users and developers don’t like having to use WebKit.
Despite it being a terrible decision, I don’t think it affects Apple’s bottom line positively at all to support other browser engines: they won’t make any money off it, will create headaches for themselves since they need to expand their security surface and do some technical work to support it, and cede control to competitors. Approximately nobody (weighted by financial impact to Apple - whether Firefox uses WebKit or not is, as far as I can tell, completely irrelevant to Apple’s bottom line) is deciding not to release on iOS because of WebKit.
They risk losing market share if another unsupported browser is seen as sufficiently superior that users avoid choosing Apple products on that basis. I don't even mind Safari, but I'm still in no hurry to lock myself into the iPhone ecosystem, partly due to those sorts of restrictions.
Other browsers are allowed, just not other browser engines. The reasons for this are technical, not arbitrary or business related. Google, Firefox, Brave et al still get the market advantages of having iOS users on their platforms, and they can and do ship their own unique browser interface features. That should count as competition.
I strongly disagree. The browser engine is hugely important. It took Apple years and years to implement features like WebGL and WebRTC, those simply cannot be grafted onto an existing engine by a wrapper app. Without any meaningful competition Apple were happy to sit on those features and implement at their own leisure. That isn't real competition.
Another example: earlier this year it was revealed that Safari had a huge security hole in its IndexedDB implementation:
There's absolutely nothing that a web browser maker could do about it. They fall victim to the exact same bugs that Safari does because they have to way to avoid it. Again, not real competition. They also broke localStorage in iOS 14.1 and took three months to fix it. Because there's nothing forcing their hand.
> The reasons for this are technical, not arbitrary or business related.
Oh my sweet summer child. Apple has many business incentives to push native solutions over web-based ones. We'll never know exactly what motivates them or why but to totally dismiss any business incentives at work here seems naive.
You're starting from the perspective that these restrictions are warranted.
High performance browsers never could have been written in the first place if PCs had these restrictions in the '90s through mid 2000s.
Who knows what "application of the future" will not be viable on iOS etc. because they're afraid of writable executable pages or any other undue restrictions.
I don’t think they’re warranted at all technically. It would just be a lot of work for Apple to now allow new browser engines with no clear benefit to Apple.
I do believe what I am saying about security is true, and it would be a non-trivial cost for Apple to have to start worrying about what happens if Chromium ships with a security bug, but at Apple scale it’s less about that cost and more about the complexity it introduces for no benefit to Apple.
To clarify I am not saying Apple’s decision is good. I think it’s very bad. I am just trying to see it from their perspective, and have to admit, it makes complete sense
And those high performance browsers also do things that if Apple allowed could result in security vulnerabilities. Even Apple disables those capabilities in its own browser in the new high security mode.
Besides, you can say a lot of things about Firefox and Chrome - but high performance and memory and power efficient aren’t traits you assign to Chrome.
PC's also had an unending stream of viruses. I don't want to have to deal with exploits on my phone.
And from a technical standpoint, high performance browsers enabled the world to misuse HTML + JS to create applications, instead of being limited to documents like it was designed to do. As a developer, building native applications is a lot more fun trying to coerce the browser into doing what I want, because the underlying design actually does what you need it to. Unless "native" means "Windows", though, that has always been painful unless you use something like Qt.
> PC's also had an unending stream of viruses. I don't want to have to deal with exploits on my phone.
This is a false choice. How many of those viruses existed because you could, as a concept (not as a default), mark a page as executable at runtime? I'm going to say precisely none of them.
Android has whichever browser you want, doesn't have an unending stream of viruses, and even allows for piracy through side-loading of apps ... so this is not a necessary measure.
I consider the browser Safari the bigger security risk because of the delay of security updates. They push security updates together with OS updates very unfrequently. Firefox, Chromium etc. push out security updates much more frequently. Would feel much safer on more regular smaller security updates on every security bug.
If it lowers their attack surface does it not by definition increase security? Personally I want a full fledged firefox on my iPhone, however I'm not going to act like it makes iOS more secure.
Apple only forbids alternative rendering engines, one can still use own networking stack. This alone allows to differentiate a browser a lot especially regarding ad blocking.
The vast majority of what makes a browser is the HTML/CSS rendering and JavaScript interpreter. Everything else is pretty much just glue to make it all work.
From an end-user point of view rendering engines are mostly indistinguishable. On the other hand the whole UI and speed of loading of pages are very much noticeable and this a developer can directly control.
Note I agree that what Apple does is bad, but claiming that it prevents differentiation where it matters is simply not true.
If iOS allowed other browsers, then parental controls as described in https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304 will obviously not work. Which eliminates a feature that many parents like.
Yes, yes. I'm well aware that there are many workarounds. Kids get around it. But, like the lock on your front door, its purpose is to give you a feeling of safety. And not to actually be safe.
The XNU kernel has great network filtering capabilities, and any modern OS can filter traffic on the kernel level. Apple could force all third-party browsers to use an entitlement that simply designates them as a browsing application, and then extend the firewall/screen time rules to those apps. It's not rocket science, content blockers have been doing this since the early 2000s.
iOS Parental Controls already allow restricting app installs. Apple could easily add an additional option to restrict installing third-party web browsers while allowing other types of apps to be installed.
I'm not willing to give Apple a pass on this major issue just because they'd have to slightly rework their Parental Controls.
If Apple allowed other browsers there would be even less competition overall in browsers - as Chrome would also dominate there too (and third parties force its use to be compatible with them).
At the monent, iOS being Safari/Webkit only is what keeps us having two engines with both having any real market share.
What competition is "this brand of smartphone is stuck with Safari"? It's not competition if there are no advantages to be gained from the choices you make. If Safari were better than the competition, Apple wouldn't be so afraid of opening up the ecosystem.
Safari would still be big on iOS because it has some very useful features and integrations that the competition doesn't offer. Apple's pseudo-TOR and lockdown mode are just two examples from the top of my head of things the competition isn't putting too much effort into. Microsoft has super-duper secure mode, but I don't think Edge users really care.
I have a contrarian point of view regarding Safari and app installation in iOS.
It will be cool if Apple opens the browser and app installation options allowing PWAs to run like iOS Apps (and all the people working with web apps will be happy).
My biggest concern with PWAs is that only ads are a viable business model for small utility apps.
The App Store rules are terrible (and give Apple too much power). But, it allows selling small utilities. In a world of PWAs, your monetization options are subscription, donation, or ads.
A subscription for a small tool doesn't make sense. Donations don't scale. Hence, the most probable option will be ads.
I agree with you. Having Safari as the only option for iOS is anti-competitive. But, honestly, the competition (Google) will love to have a world of apps relying on their ads infra. The first thing I'll do if I were Google is to add all the missing APIs to Chrome PWAs, so devs don't have a good reason to continue using the App Store. I don't love the idea of having ads and tracking in every little app.
Then don't use them instead of telling everyone else what they can or cannot use. There are plenty of apps that never get made because of anti-competitive App Store policies and fees. Nobody is forcing you to use any competition that flourishes when anti-competitive app distribution policies that artificially restrict consumer choice are dropped.
I always find it interesting that Facebook and Google get trotted out as potential boogeymen whenever the topic of greater consumer choice on all computing platforms is brought up, because such arguments conveniently downplay the very real and actually present enemy to user freedom that is Apple literally dictating what products consumers are allowed to use on their own devices.
>What competition is "this brand of smartphone is stuck with Safari"? It's not competition if there are no advantages to be gained from the choices you make.
It's not about competition in browser choices as an iOS user. I'm talking about more diversity across platforms, as opposed to a single engine everywhere, and especially about who'd control that engine (if the single engine was some FOSS one, created by strong community or cross-industry collaboration, I'd might be ok with that).
So, iOS being Webkit only, means it's still more competition than Chrome/Google dictating everything about the web, and taking it into whatever direction it pleased it.
At least now websites NEED to be compatible with iOS, and Google still needs to at least somewhat pretend to care for web standards, and it also means whatever Google unilatery pushes as a new web API or feature doesn't just get adopted by everybody.
Can anyone explain why any technically aware person, especially free software advocates, would willingly use, much less pay for, a computer (even one disguised as a "telephone" which it is not) that someone else controls? It beggars belief.
See Cory Doctorow's article about the feudalism of digital platforms (an expansion of Bruce Schneier's idea). The gist is that digital security and compatibility is difficult enough to keep up with that most people conclude serfdom to a platform warlord is worth it.
I mean Mozilla refuses to implement WebSerial just like Apple. They’re both holding back functions just because “they” feel they get to define what we should do instead of us.
I also own my car, but not surprisingly Tesla won’t have anything to do with me if I replace the batteries with ones from a different producer, because even though I own it, they get the bad PR when it blows up. But of cause I have the legal right to do so, just like you have the legal right to jailbreak your iPhone. Just don’t expect the original company to be of any help to you.
Tesla's a funny example to pick; if they detect that you've tampered with it, the company doesn't stop at "not having anything to do with you" - they actively kneecap your car. Not for liability reasons, but because it undermines their ability to market segment. You don't really "own" a Tesla the way you own most other cars.
I’m not sure why browsers are treated differently than other pieces of software. Operating systems ship a bundled calculator, text editor, email software, basic rich text editing, photo viewer, pdf viewer, etc. All of these are used much more than their quality would indicate simply because they are installed by default. Should an OS be required to interview the user on install for what their preferred choice of all of these products are?
What's the problem? The only people that complain about it are some web devs and companies that would love to get their grubby data collecting hands on your device's battery and gyroscope data.
I've read the first 25 pages or so, and the question is not answered there.
One takeaway that is important, IMO, is this one:
> Without browser diversity, a single company’s influence can shape the internet.
That would be a problem if iOS accounts for a large majority of all http traffic. That, however, is not the case. If there's one platform that accounts for the large majority of http traffic, it is Chrome. It's estimated market share is 65%. Its derivates take 10% more.
Allowing Chrome on iOS will slowly but surely obliterate Safari. Firefox' market share is a joke to begin with (and I say this as a lifelong Firefox user; I even use Firefox on iOS). Browser diversity ends when Chrome arrives on iOS, and it would end the limited privacy we have on iOS, unless Apple would really tighten the rules.
> The only people that complain about it are some web devs and companies that would love to get their grubby data collecting hands on your device's battery and gyroscope data.
Why would allowing more browser engines have even the slightest impact on that? Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
Native apps go through App Store review, and can be permanently banned for misuse for tracking purposes without express user consent.
Allowing more browser engines would require granting those engines your battery and gyroscope data in order for them to display per-site permission dialogs.
This problem is unique to browser engines and no other kind of app, as browser engines are uniquely the only kind of app that needs this sort of permissions-granting per-site passthrough.
Apple likely does not consider it interesting or relevant to their users to invest in validating the security models of third-party browser engines for their adherence to App Store standards, nor in providing a public API for third party engines to do so, and so closes off the entire problem space by refusing third-party engines altogether.
> Allowing more browser engines would require granting those engines your battery and gyroscope data in order for them to display per-site permission dialogs.
...a process which could be reviewed as part of the App Store review process.
There isn't really any difference here. If your app reads gyroscope data App Store review will (theoretically!) make sure you're not doing anything nefarious with it. They could just as easily verify whether a browser passes data through correctly.
Correct: they are not doing something that is possible to do. What benefits to their users result from that choice?
(I’m aware of what drawbacks result from it, but that’s been explained to death in a thousand replies in a hundred posts about this already, so no need to derail into them here.)
Apple did issue a fix after a few weeks but with no alternative browser engines the only alternative was “don’t use the web on your iPhone”, which is absurd.
Other user benefits might include better performance, more capabilities (it took Apple years to implement WebRTC, for example) and in general more competition that might spur Safari into becoming a better browser.
The other browser engines have other security CVEs. Switching engines on the backend does not materially reduce the total attack surface for vulnerabilities for any given everyday user. Using security vulnerabilities as a primary condition of existence also leads to the introduction of engine oversight, review, and adamant “update or be removed” policy enforcement upon third parties, all of which who will complain endlessly in the press about the draconian App Store policies they would be subject to. I expect a better case will need to be made to convince Apple.
You make the case that it’s to the benefit of their users to allow multiple browser engines. I am personally not convinced by your case, for the reasons stated above. I do not expect Apple to be convinced by your case either.
You may choose here to strengthen your argument, but your declaration that it’s hopeless to do so is of no help in that regard. If you wish to continue, I’m willing to listen.
May I remark that you're not answering the question?
> Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
Except that Safari doesn't expose them while Chrome wants to (or already does), offering Google more fingerprinting capabilities. Native apps don't send data to Google, Chrome does.
Safari absolutely exposes gyroscope data. Not sure where you’re getting the idea that it doesn’t.
The problem is that Apple is slow to implement useful web standards. I don’t think the battery API is all that useful either but WebRTC is incredibly useful and it took Apple years to catch up. If they had meaningful competition in the iOS browser space they’d have more incentive to try.
I complain about it as a user, and I take my money to android (reluctantly) as a result. I would love to run apple hardware for my phone, but their over the top control over the whole closed wall ecosystem is why I don't.
That's a bit of a false dichotomy don't you think?
You're looking at one extreme where the OS must hold the user's hand to get them to install alternatives. But that's not what users deserve. They just deserve to have the ability to choose to install what they want, rather than it being blocked, or deceptively hidden.
See this from the article:
> Operating systems regularly design their systems to undermine rather than facilitate consumer choice: they can make it difficult to change default settings; they can make it hard to install new browsers; they can deploy nudges and deceptive messaging to push consumers to their own products.
This is a good example. If Apple treated their bundled calculators, text editors, email software, photo viewers and PDF viewers like they treated their browser, nobody would use MacOS.
One of us is clearly confused. As far as I can tell, Apple does treat those bundled apps on MacOS exactly as they treat Safari. Any can be replaced, but all are good enough that most people don't bother. The most likely to be replaced is probably Safari (with Chrome).
The point I'm making is that if they treated their professionals the same way they treat iOS users, their professionals would no longer work with them.
> if they treated their professionals the same way they treat iOS users
They seem to treat "professionals" and "users" the same in iOS. Maybe there is a counterfactual world where Apple does even better by treating "professionals" differently? If anything people, "professionals" or not, have long pulled iOS into enterprise contexts despite lagging and lackluster IT management support and Apple coop with corp IT.
he means if apple did the same garbo on osx, people would leave.
if you couldn't install cs suite or final cut or whatever, because apple comes with its own default stuff, no one would use osx.
I can't install my own browsers, my own antivirus, my own file explorer, my own shell, or my own applications in iOS as I see fit. but they do allow this on osx.
Your comment, I understand. I still don't think GP's comment makes any sense.
> If Apple treated their bundled calculators, text editors, email software, photo viewers and PDF viewers like they treated their browser, nobody would use MacOS.
That if/then is a counterfactual that deserves thought. I'm sure someone in Cupertino is tasked with measuring out the win/loss if MacOS goes full iOS. I wouldn't like that MacOS either, but that isn't relevant to a good decision.
Pro:
1. MS Office is basically completely a web app now. No binary install needed. iOS binaries are already present and optimized.
2. Adobe subscription software is not far behind and iOS versions are present.
3. Antivirus what? in the iOS model.
NB. You can install your own iOS shell (if it connects to something other than localhost).
Con:
1. Apple has a relatively small business selling FCP etc.
2. Apple has a larger business/ecosystem selling App Store shovels/lotto tickets that need dev environments.
3. Apple's high end use is a halo for lower end Mac sales. If restrictions cripple high end use and they lose the halo, then the aspirational crowd goes.
It's not about bundling software with the OS, but _preventing other pieces of software from being installed_. iOS disallows alternative browser engines. When you install Chrome or Firefox on iOS, it's just a wrapper around the Safari browser engine.
Ok Moz if browsers are essential why are you complicit in making them even more complex all the time, and push for entire new runtimes such as WASM even? If browsers were commodity items, we'd see more innovation and participation than we do now. The same "gatekeeper" argument brought against OSs in the report also works against browsers which, with the exception of Safari, are produced by an unhealthy browser cartel.
(comment copied from when this was posted the first time a couple days ago)
> why are you complicit in making them even more complex all the time, and push for entire new runtimes such as WASM even?
Because we're out of options. Apple pushed us all here by crying "there's no other way" when people question their monopoly over app distribution. If you want browsers to be less complex, then you should advocate for the free distribution of software so the web isn't the only viable place to deliver you content.
In 2022, I'm looking at the plethora of browsers available for MacOS, and sticking with Safari. Chrome would be my second choice, and in fact I have it installed, but only use it once a month or so on average. Nothing from Mozilla or Brave or anyone else is even installed.
You can say the complexity is required to compete, but I stick with Safari because it is simple, and fast, and doesn't gorge itself on system memory.
Go for it. Safari (rather WebKit) is an option on all sorts of platforms, but nobody uses it where it isn't preinstalled. Safari is free to be as simple as it wants, but that doesn't excuse them for blocking browser innovation on iOS.
It's been some number of months, so I thought, hey, I'll take this opportunity to see what I'm missing out on with Firefox. And I'll even start with whatever Firefox says for the comparison. Fortunately, there's a handy page for that[0].
Under "Security and Privacy," it looks like both do fine. Firefox pledges to "Block cryptomining scripts," which... I have Ghostery installed, so I think I'm probably safe there. Other than that there are some sister-products I could install, and Firefox is cross-platform, but I have MacOS and iOS, so I guess no win there.
Under "Utility," I'm missing "Autoplay blocking," except... no, that's in Safari as well. I can "Allow All Auto-Play," "Stop Media with Sound," or "Never Auto-Play," and set that per website, too. Maybe that's just out-of-date. (Ah yes, comparison is based on Safari 14, I am running 15.5) For the rest, Firefox seems to begrudgingly give a nod to Safari here, suggesting extensions to try to make up for functionality Firefox lacks natively. But it does suggest Firefox's screenshots feature, which... MacOS has handy keyboard shortcuts for screenshots already, and lots of options about where and how to save the results, so I'm not sure why I'd want to use something different for Firefox than I use for everything else.
Next up is "Portability," but since I'm already in the Apple ecosystem for both work and home, this does nothing for me.
So nope, still nothing that suggests I should try again.
It's funny, the thing I remember most from when I last used Firefox a couple of years ago was "Multi-Account Containers," but I see now that was an add-on, not native to the browser proper.
In any case, I'm glad Firefox exists, because more choice is always good! I mean, would I now have tab groups in Safari if some other company hadn't done something similar first? So carry on, Firefox, Brave, etc. Meanwhile, I'll stick with Safari to help ensure that at least one browser survives against Chrome.
Firefox is no position to make these kinds of moves (7% of desktop users, ~0% of mobile). Taking activist stances on how they want to see the web will serve to do nothing but drive more users away from Firefox.
> If browsers were commodity items, we'd see more innovation and participation than we do now
commodity != competitive
If anything the low margin of a commodity market freezes innovation and participation. If anything the period leading up to monopoly is the best for innovation and participation. The monopoly company takes its winnings for a time and then loses its shine as it matures and a new paradigm takes over.
Like you said, Mozilla has an unhealthy revenue model from the cartel. If anything they act as sock puppet competition for Google, a subsidiary save in name out of monopsony.
Still, in 2020, Mozilla Corporation’s revenue was $466 million from its search partnerships (largely driven by its search deal with Google), subscriptions and advertising revenue.
Hmm I think you're right wrt commodity markets and lack of incentives for innovation. What I meant was that if the specs for the "web stack" would set any kind of reasonable target for implementation, then we could've seen new browser projects, especially F/OSS user and privacy-focussed ones; but they don't, making them mere instruments for pulling up the ladder. Despite of this, folks cheer at eg bits of inessential yet complex CSS additions and bloating JavaScript the language with inessential features.
What is the scope of what you call the "web stack?" Is DNS, TLS, http, html, css, DOM, ECMA, not enough of a standard/target already?
I think the challenge for F/OSS user and privacy-focussed browsers is an environment where a living can't be made with it through licensing/subscriptions. Pureblood Gnu is fine for folks with academic sinecures, but without cash, the bazaar is bare. Brave is making an effort as is the Neeva search engine, probably others too.
> Is DNS, TLS, http, html, css, DOM, ECMA, not enough of a standard/target already?
It is, but as long as we allow a single party to grossly bloat HTML, http and DNS (ie DoH, http/3) plus driving CSS ad absurdum over the course of 25 years, not to speak of JS APIs, there's not even a theoretical chance of new browsers emerging, since by the time those efforts can be completed, they're obsolete. And Mozilla is complicit in this, yet want to lecture us about the open web and stuff.
Mozilla is really complaining about pushy sales tactics, when they themselves push their paid Pocket service on me every time they can find an excuse to do so?
Yup, with the benefit of hindsight, it sure seems that allowing browsers to be fully programmable was a massive error. Instead of a web allowing instant browsing jumping from reference to reference, we have pages that take tens of seconds to load on machines with massive processors & RAM with 100+Mb connections.
Perhaps it should be bifurcated into a HyperCard-like browser and a fully functional client. Of course the HC-like version would likely die the same death as the 5kb website contest [0].
I'd argue that the browser is trying to be the Operating System, and we're living in some strange intermediary time before the hellscape that is "Chrome becoming a kernel & OS" happens.
It's an IDE for a runtime-compiled-at-download application environment, with a really crappy widget system. And I've wondered the same thing. How far are we from someone writing a "bare metal" browser that would run on hardware without an OS, even if that hardware were just a Raspberry Pi?
Chrome is holding on to a 67% market share on desktops[0] despite not being pre-installed on either of the two most popular desktop operating systems.
I see the polls, I understand the concern, but Mozilla probably should focus on why the 46% of people who do know how to replace their default browser almost universally choose to replace it with Chrome, rather than Firefox.
That’s easy. Google.com prompts you to install Chrome if you’re not running Chrome when you visit. There’s not equivalent site for Mozilla (MDN doesn’t have the same reach as “Google it”).
just two cents here, as far as I know, all browsers need GPU acceleration.
you can try to turn it off see how fast you can browse.
so without OS, how can browser drive GPU?
Based on my previous knowledge, text, UI controls, video frames all have to go through the render pipeline. Should be no exception.
This is community talk, just fyi.
Video acceleration and rendering acceleration are both mainstream.
On Chrome, open chrome://gpu which will tell you various things about its use of your GPU.
I'm not aware of an equivalent page for Firefox but opening about:support should somewhere inform you of the compositor, which when it says "WebRender" also makes use of your GPU.
> Chrome is holding on to a 67% market share on desktops[0] despite not being pre-installed on either of the two most popular desktop operating systems.
1. It's advertised on the two most popular search engines.
2. Microsoft doesn't include Chrome in Windows, but a lot of Windows OEMs pre-install Chrome.
> Crucially, people raise concerns about privacy and security, but they similarly fail to act on these concerns.
People who throw rocks shouldn't live in glass houses.
Mobile client ads on the home screen, heavily pushed VPN service, forced integration with networked bookmark services, "experiments" that don't check for privacy issues, default search using Google, and a long history of being reactive, not proactive, when it comes to privacy issues - these are just a handful of the problems that Firefox is currently mishandling.
Firefox is in many ways better than Chrome, Safari, and Edge, but it's not exactly a shining paragon of privacy and ethics either. I'd personally prefer that you clean up your house first, please.
isn't that whataboutism, they're still massively better in every aspect than all of their competitors, & are the only mobile browser that allows blocking ads
Perhaps, but I find it deeply hypocritical for them to be attacking others when they behave nearly as badly as well (tell me how I can uninstall pocket, not just hide it).
> they're still massively better in every aspect than all of their competitors
"in every aspect" Not in power consumption on MacOS, and not in development tools, when compared to Chrome. Just to name two.
Plus, even if they were on top, being on top should never exclude them from criticism.
> are the only mobile browser that allows blocking ads
They are not, in particular on iOS. Safari, and by association all browsers on IOS, can block ads via content blockers.
One does not exclude the other. Asking participants of a discussion to be beyond most criticism before emitting an opinion would just maintain the status quo longer and kill the debate.
Hardly. A comparison and contrast of issues for all the primary browsers - and ranking what the biggest issues are within and between each platform - would be immensely valuable.
The only thing that will kill the debate is if - like modern US politics - we're all too firmly entrenched in our own camps to accept another camp's point of view.
>>> Try a fast, secure browser with updates built in.
----> Bing.com, or any other Microsoft service
>>> Microsoft Recommends Edge Browser for Windows 11/10.
----> When setting a default browser
>>> Microsoft recommends that you keep Edge as the default browser
----> Apple OSX
>>> Try the new Safari - A fast, energy efficient, with a beautiful design.
Ironically, all these 3 browsers have some serious shortcomings like heavy telemetry, tracking, or having a completely out-of-the-loop user experience.
This is why we need to switch to non-profit OSS like Firefox. Brave is also a good choice but not a non-profit.
No it's not, as regardless of how bad all the commercial software is, when the general population just wants to go to Facebook, YouTube and watch porn, no browser switching of any kind is going to improve that. You can assume that most computer-users aren't in it for some ideological, privacy or security concept, they just want to consume some content and move on.
I think this is under-selling the value of something like Safari. I'm on Hacker News, not just a general population rando, and I still care more about usability than most ideological concepts. I don't like Chrome and would stay away from Edge for many reasons if it were even a viable option on MacOS, but I'm still not switching. Since Safari doesn't have "heavy telemetry" or "tracking," I assume the "completely out-of-the-loop user experience" was aimed at it, but I haven't found that to be the case either.
If one cares more about OSS than UXP, then by all means, go full-Stallman. I just don't think there are very many people who care that much, which is why Chrome is as popular as it is.
I mostly prefer network-based blocking (DNS and IP), but generally I mostly block for security and not as much for content. I don't consume content from many ad-infested sources anyway, and the speed of the networks and computers I tend to use doesn't really make the ad loading that much of a problem.
For me, if I can get done what I wanted to get done, and no malware foothold was created, I really don't care about the rest.
If Chromium is a requirement I’d choose the ungoogled-chromium flatpak but for normal people Brave is preferable over proprietary options, despite the crypto bullshit.
This is unfortunately not about the technical details of operating systems that hold them back but rather user interface concerns (installing browsers, changing defaults).
Since modern browsers should be named WebVMs and they consider OSes as a mere bootloader for the real third-party someone else computer OS (the modern web, named cloud) it's normal that some surveillance capitalism business who happen to be the aforementioned someone else computer OS for the masses do like their personal surveilled gardens...
The modern web is the issue and the proof that Xerox time Desktop systems were the best solution we have ever created.
"Browser vendor says that browsers are so important that browser vendors should get special legal privileges that other application vendors don't get."
I'm guessing that I'm not the only reader here old enough to remember 1999-2001 US vs Microsoft [1], and who celebrated when Judge Jackson colorfully told MS to stop beating a dead horse [2], and who was sad at the successful appeal of the verdict against MS. We rooted for the small upstart fighting entrenched big tech, and later cheered with Netscape Navigator was open-sourced, starting the path to Firefox.
I admit that I'm not using Firefox by default now (when I've used it, it worked fine), but it seems that many others here have real gripes with how Firefox works as a default browser, and are basically saying "Mozilla can blame themselves for being marginal".
Can someone ELI5 what Mozilla did to deserve this derision?
Also MDN is an awesome and invaluable resource [3].
>Can someone ELI5 what Mozilla did to deserve this derision?
I would say its because Mozilla isn't the incorruptible champion of web browsing. Yes, they have done bad decisions, bad(and good) products have been axed that are unrelated to a browser, and they have being influenced by political issues because, well, people work at Mozilla and people get to be influenced by that. So bad impressions triumph over any campaign they have done, like the ones quoted from the article below.
Browsers and the Quest for More Private Advertising
- 2009 - Mozilla leads the Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) Working Group at W3C. This
is a signal sent by the browser to websites indicating that the user does not
wish to be tracked online. All major browsers implement DNT. The advertising
industry fails to adopt DNT and the initiative ultimately fails.
- 2015 - Firefox launches “Tracking Protection.” This was an important but small
step. It is off by default and blocks ads that track.
2018 - Firefox launches Facebook Container based on several months of
work to isolate first party cookies.96 This is another small step forward
against tracking.
- 2019 - Firefox launches with Enhanced Tracking Protection (“ETP”) based
on learnings from earlier efforts alongside an “anti-tracking policy”.97 ETP is a
success, and drives all major browsers except Chrome to implement similar
features.
- 2020 - Firefox blocks third-party fingerprinting resources98 and includes pro-
tections against redirect tracking.99 Mozilla leads the formation of the Privacy
Community Group at the W3C.100
- 2021 - Firefox takes on supercookies,101 introduces Total Cookie Protection,102
and trims HTTP Referrers to protect privacy.103 Mozilla leads the formation of
the Privacy Advertising Technology Community Group at the W3C.104
- 2022 - Firefox launches Total Cookie Protection by default105 and adds manual
protections against link decoration.106 Mozilla continues work on Privacy Pre-
serving Advertising107 through both criticism of and collaboration with Google,
Apple, Meta and others.
Removal of customization and advanced features, introduction of unrelated and pointless real world politics, forays into markets not desired, the list goes on.
I admit I haven't so much as glanced through their rant/essay, not the least because I don't value anything Mozilla has to say anymore.
Assuming Mozilla is talking about operating systems and how they mandate or encourage their own in-house offerings in lieu of third-party offerings, I'd say Mozilla is being a hypocrite.
Firefox usurped IE6 at a time when all odds were against them, and Chrome today continues to overcome all such factors at play (only Android has Chrome as the default browser). Mozilla's very own history demonstrates that operating system lock-ins do not prevent an eventual change in the browser market leader.
So yes, I would say their history of misguidance undermines their own arguments. Mozilla has an inferior product, which once was a superior product, and they are now groveling with pedantics because they can't once again ship a superior product (specifically, superior to Chrome) to reobtain market share.
Whatever Mozilla wants to say or is saying here, they are the words of a loser who does not understand why he is losing, made even worse because the loser was once before a winner heralded as the saviour of worlds.
> Can someone ELI5 what Mozilla did to deserve this derision?
Assumption:
People have troubles with certain web applications like MS teams, goto-meeting,.. or youtube.
Mozilla has to adapt to undocumented changes. There are an increasing amount of applications which do not support firefox (strange, because the web should be browser independent).
People think Mozilla is responsible for this.
Mozilla does not generate income with Firefox (besides dontations!). Why is it so important to have the biggest market share with a browser? I suppose there is data to be collected by the other players.
The main browser problems right now are Apple not allowing alternate engines, Google spamming Chrome on Google.com's search engine, Mozilla getting its money from Google and the default browser on Android.
Part of the problem is non-technical users that know how to switch are switching to chrome because they hit small issues/niggles that "just work" in chrome. That's been happening slowly over time; mozilla hasn't helped itself by taking, let's say, detours into non-browser related stuff.
It's not just OS vendors, it hasn't helped that more and more companies are just targeting/supporting chrome. They'll ship & test on chrome as tier1, not firefox... not that it wouldn't work, but again, it'll be "should or might work".
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadBut the web is not the internet. And every problem that Mozilla brings up in this report stems from them, and other browser developing corporations, treating web pages as applications instead of as documents.
The other half of the reason is that Web applications are way easier to deploy, even if 100% of your users are on Windows, because the second-order-effect of being locked-down is less gatekeeping and less scare screens. If a web app is able to see stuff that it hasn't been explicitly granted access to, that's considered the Browser's fault for allowing it instead of it being the User's fault for installing an untrusted app.
Hypercard, NLS, and other systems that predated and informed the WWW were all envisioned to do so much more than display links and text, and it's a very myopic view in my opinion to suggest otherwise. I recommend anyone who shares this perspective look into the spiritual predecessors of the Web to better understand where we've been and where things are going.
What do you mean by this?
The problems they bring up essentially boil down to increasing user access to privacy, security, and new features. Locking people into default browsers put us back into the stagnant, horrible IE6 era.
The only thing I can figure out is you're saying if client-side scripting didn't exist, some of these would be less pressing. Which is true, but it does exist, so the choice is abolish/avoid it (good luck getting mass user adoption!), or deal with it.
Which attitude I happen to find immensely frustrating because I think becoming a more all-inclusive Internet client, and especially combining services in interesting ways, would have been one viable path to maintaining relevance, differentiating themselves, and maintaining user-enthusiasm and evangelism, if they'd started 10-12 years ago.
The "web" is a joke. Other people here are taking issue with this comment, but there's a distinct truth to it. You can argue semantics, but web "browsers" were designed around navigating HTML. Now they are IDE's for runtime-compiled applications using HTML primitives, positioned by CSS, in place of an actual, useful, concrete widget system, like you get in Visual Basic. If this had been the development target for "browsers" 25 years ago, I wonder how much better we could have evolved this system than the morass of JS we have now, and all the problems that go with it.
Suggested quick fix: make it "OS:s" if it fits.
Edit: closed qoute.
"Why Browsers Are Essential to the Internet and How Operating Systems Are Holding Them Back"
"Why Browsers Are Essential to the Internet and How Open Sources Are Holding Them Back"
If you want to play a game of semantics, then sure, point to you. If you want to just have a normal conversation about users doing what they want, then I'd say you're outside of the lines on that last shot.
They bundled Internet Explorer with Windows, and yes, they did some dirty tricks to try to keep users on IE rather than use alternate browsers. But "other browser engines are forbidden on the phone or tablet" was not something they did.
They still are not "doing the same thing" as that.
Then again, I'm not in your imagination.
Something something don't be snarky something something HN rules.
Yeah... this wasn't what actually got them in trouble and is a gross oversimplification. They were actively working against Netscape by making other browsers *not work* on the OS. It also wasn't standards-compliant and had all sorts of proprietary tech (VBScript, JScript, OCX, and MSHTML) that would only work with their browser
Why it's structured this way, I've no idea. I don't think supplying the hardware should be the distinguishing factor that allows them to wall-in the device. It's one thing to force them to support and integrate devices/software into their product, which is probably not fair on the company, but it's another thing to actively get in the way. It's a thin line with a lot of grey area, but the way it's setup currently probably isn't right.
*viable is doing a lot of heavy lifting as they did need that propping up
I get why you wouldn't want to trust Apple's self-reported numbers, but why would Wikimedia [1] also report Android as being more popular than iOS? What do they get out of it?
[1]: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#all-sit...
Apple is not forcing its OEM partners to exclude 3rd party browsers.
If Microsoft made its own hardware and packaged IE with its version of the OS sold on its hardware - there wouldn't be an issue.
The big difference is that Apple doesn't license its software to 3rd parties.
On the other hand, if Google were to compel its OEM partners to include software, then Google would likely be facing various government bodies that have issue with this process and possibly facing fines.
Microsoft does make its own hardware. The Surface line of products are pretty amazing. They didn't break any OEM 3rd party market nor dictate anything. In fact, they have a "signature system" policy for their first party hardware that it won't be full of bloatware like 3rd party OEMs used to do.
Google has slowly been destroying its 3rd parties and 3rd parties playing in its ecosystem have been moving towards forking for a while which is why there is always the complaint of unsupported devices after a single cycle there. (and so many community roms/hacks/installers floating around to address this)
Tangent to this is that Safari isn't the dominant market browser in any space.
One can't say that Apple's bundling of Safari within iOS is letting them abuse their market dominant position to force other companies to install software that they don't want to.Really wish they hadn't gone and invented yet another kind of charge port.
At some point Microsoft was forced to include a browser choice program on installation and it had marginal effects on the IE user base. Likewise, despite the heavy shilling, Edge can barely get a foot in. Realistically all that changed is we now have to boot Edge or IE to get another browser again (from average user PoV).
> 18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.
Apple has OEM partners? :-)
Seriously, the lawsuit against Microsoft involved anti-competitive behavior, not anti-consumer behavior. In this case, other businesses have better legal protections than customers.
As noted in the complaint, there were several parts to it relevant to a browser ( https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp ). The first three:
------
16. First, Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, test, and promote Internet Explorer, a product which it distributes without separate charge. As Paul Maritz, Microsoft's Group Vice President in charge of the Platforms Group, was quoted in the New York Times as telling industry executives: "We are going to cut off their air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free." As reported in the Financial Times, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates likewise warned Netscape (and other potential Microsoft challengers) in June 1996: "Our business model works even if all Internet software is free. . . . We are still selling operating systems. What does Netscape's business model look like? Not very good."
17. But Mr. Gates did not stop at free distribution. Rather, Microsoft purposefully set out to do whatever it took to make sure significant market participants distributed and used Internet Explorer instead of Netscape's browser -- including paying some customers to take IE and using its unique control over Windows to induce others to do so. For example, in seeking the support of Intuit, a significant application software developer, Mr. Gates was blunt, as he reported in a July 1996 internal e-mail:
I was quite frank with him [Scott Cook, CEO of Intuit] that if he had a favor we could do for him that would cost us something like $1M to do that in return for switching browsers in the next few months I would be open to doing that. (MS6 6007642).
18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.
19. Third, Microsoft intends now unlawfully to tie its Internet browser software to its new Windows 98 operating system, the successor to Windows 95. Microsoft has made clear that, unless restrained, it will continue to misuse its operating system monopoly to artificially exclude browser competition and deprive customers of a free choice between browsers.
------
You can go through these complaints (and the other three - down to paragraph 32) and ask "is Apple doing these things?"
Is apple going out and trying to squash Chrome on windows machines (remember, Microsoft released IE for OS 6 or was it 7?). Is Apple trying to call up Amazon and have them replace Chrome with Safari on their Kindle devices?
The things that Microsoft got in trouble with for its anti-competitive practices with IE are completely separate and distinct from the things that people accuse Apple with for being anti-consumer.
Apple has gotten their wrist slapped for being anti-competitive with books in the past.
Half of DOJ's case about anti-competitive behavior was about the activities that Microsoft took to try to force Netscape out of places through business pressure. Two of the other items were about OEM and licensing, and one was about bundling the browser into the next version of Windows.
The time that Apple did do that was with book pricing. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/justice-d...
Their secret at the time? Making an actually good browser that offered features the incumbent didn't have, something Mozilla has absolutely given up on in pursuit of making a Chrome lookalike, up to the point of removing certain features (that power users - their only marketshare at this point - very much miss) and even implementing arbitrary restrictions on the add-ons you can install on Android (you have to use a complex workaround to install unapproved ones). The thing is, people who want Chrome will just use the real thing and have no reason to use a slower lookalike with poor compatibility.
Here's an easy idea to sell Firefox on the desktop to the masses: built-in uBlock Origin, out of the box. Nobody I know that has tried an ad blocker ever switched back, and if they do fall for a dark pattern and switch back to an alternative browser, ads will be a persistent reminder telling them to go back to Firefox. Actually give non-technical users a real, tangible reason to use Firefox.
Apple has codified their anticompetitive behaviour into iOS
The same with Apple and their protectionist monopoly platform.
Both companies deserve DOJ slaps.
If you're a start-up founder, these companies are seeping you of the time and budget you need to succeed. They're unfairly sucking the air out of the economy for the rest of us.
Do you think Firefox would have a significant marketshare, and if so, why?
I don't see what out-of-the-box Firefox brings to a non-technical user compared to Chrome. Yes, it can be made significantly better than Chrome with specific configuration and add-ons like uBlock Origin, but non-technical users aren't aware of that and will not try (and those who are already use Firefox).
When it comes to nagging, Firefox is unfortunately also quite bad, every major update it will find some bullshit to nag you about such as "colorways", Pocket or a VPN.
Google defaults you to Chrome on Android. That's 49% of users, and most won't know to switch.
Google assaults you with Chrome ads on their search page if you use a default browser without adblock.
Google pays for default search status on Apple. Then pulls you in.
Google is currently running a nationwide "better on Chrome" ad campaign. Billboards and murals everywhere.
Remember that they are non-technical, they aren't aware of FOSS or the history of Mozilla and have no ideological reason to pick Firefox, so the decision has to be made purely on functionality.
What groundbreaking, relevant-to-the-average-user functionality (dev tools and advanced, off-by-default privacy options don't count) does Firefox have out of the box that Chrome doesn't?
If Chrome didn't have Google backing it and Apple didn't mandate Safari, Firefox would likely have significant market share.
This isn't a battle over functionality, it's monopolistic invasion of an open ecosystem by giants that control all of the ingress points. They're turning the entirety of the web itself into an ad/product funnel for giants.
I don't care if Mozilla wins. I just don't think the world is healthy with two OS/mobile/search vendors controlling every major piece of technology.
The technology sector will be healthier if these companies are forced to break up. There will be more competition and more innovation as less is spent fighting for the last 1% of growth.
Unfortunately for the Mozilla fanbois, though, Firefox won't be an usurper a second time because as already mentioned it's degenerated into simply a Chrome ripoff.
A new competitor can usurp the throne, but it needs to be a genuinely better product to do that and Firefox today is not a genuinely better product.
Then I used chrome because it was faster and performed better.
Now I use safari because its fast enough and chrome is getting creepy.
That's basically how most people 'choose' their browser.
It also goes over how every other browser engine is actually a Chrome ripoff - some UX changes don't make that so.
Respecting privacy.
I urge non-technical people to switch to Firefox constantly. People understand, often cannot be bothered.
Times change and more and more people are realising that in the twenty first century we need to protect ourselves not so much government oppression as corporate dominance and surveillance. So they bother
Part of that is using Firefox. In my experience, people get it. Be they computer programmers or plumbers.
Firefox in its default configuration does nothing about privacy because just the IP address and user-agent are unique enough to track you. It may actually make it even worse because Firefox' marketshare is so small that the user-agent sticks out like a sore thumb.
You need uBlock Origin to have any chance at privacy.
Firefox these days includes a number of features which threaten user's privacy that must be disabled. Their biggest sins I think were forcing Pocket onto people by default, their new tab page, searching from the address bar, and prefetch.
Google is investing a lot in making websites run better on user computers, while protecting the users from malicious websites. This is a problem if you're trying to sell a browser. And an opportunity if you're trying to make a good website.
If Google was actually sucking air out of the ecosystem, all of the VCs would stop investing in websites because no money could be made. But they invest because Google isn't doing that, and there is a ton of air in the economy.
For a contrast, look at what happened to Windows applications in the 1990s. Microsoft really did suck the air out of the system. Startups really did die en masse. And VC stopped investing in Windows applications because your viable outcomes were fail, be bought out by Microsoft cheaply, or be wiped out by Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior. None of which made money for the VC.
Google is also investing a lot into gulping up large chunks of the market too, they're investing heavily into spying on user behavior and collecting as much info as possible. All in the name of improving usability.
Not saying only Google is the culprit here, all big players do it. What I am pointing out is that a lot of these are really hurting the user in the name of making things better for the user.
I don't disagree that there's probably things Mozilla could do better in their desktop browser.
I do think it's an off topic distraction in a comment thread sparked by a report of how operating systems are abusing their position to limit competition in web browsers.
The PC OEMs didn't "build" a platform, they licensed Windows from Microsoft and that license contained anti-competitive clauses. Apple's restrictions on iOS are also anti-competitive, regardless of the fact that they also built the hardware.
Yes
> Apple's restrictions on iOS are also anti-competitive
Why, exactly? Should Subway be forced to allow McDonald's to sell Big Macs inside of each of their locations? That's competition, not anticompetitive.
There software that runs only on macOS, but nowhere near the extent of Windows. The overwhelming majority of people using a Mac have made a decision to use an Apple product. For most Windows users, this was never a choice.
The idea that Firefox was able to get market share besides MS anti-competitive actions is incorrect. Firefox was better than IE in many areas, but the history will be different if users cannot switch the default browser.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history
Firefox does have Firefox Focus on mobile with built in ad blocking/tracker blocking. I use it all the time yet I’m still not sure whether it allows “acceptable” ads due to general ad blindness, though I know it doesn’t block everything (which could just be due to lack of community reports for that ad type, or something).
Great, then it means it's time to actually build a profitable business, or at least own up to their conflict of interest instead of blaming everyone for their inability to run a business without relying on handouts.
Did Microsoft do anything worse than bundling IE with Windows and integrating it into the file manager? Frankly Windows now is much worse than it was then, taking note of the hissy fit Windows 10/11 throws when you go to switch your default browser away from Edge.
pretty easy to do when the incumbent barely worked on their browser for 5 years because they had a monopoly. i would assume no one would be as dumb as balmer to choke out their own monopoly position to save a few bucks
It’s not clear what they gain from allowing other engines because probably nobody is eschewing iOS/iPhone because of having to use webkit.
Apple could still easily introduce a very rigorous review process for browsers that would likely result in Chromium and maybe “actual” Firefox being approved. But, until a court forces them to, they don’t have any reason to create that headache for themselves.
They probably never expected to be able to get away with this for as long as they have.
Apple gain nothing. That precisely why they don't do it. However, we all suffer from a web platform that gets held back by there being zero competition on iOS.
I'd be surprised if this couldn't be turned towards pushing for greater user choice as it was when MS was bundling internet explorer for years. If memory serves, it was competition law which was used to undo that.
Despite it being a terrible decision, I don’t think it affects Apple’s bottom line positively at all to support other browser engines: they won’t make any money off it, will create headaches for themselves since they need to expand their security surface and do some technical work to support it, and cede control to competitors. Approximately nobody (weighted by financial impact to Apple - whether Firefox uses WebKit or not is, as far as I can tell, completely irrelevant to Apple’s bottom line) is deciding not to release on iOS because of WebKit.
Another example: earlier this year it was revealed that Safari had a huge security hole in its IndexedDB implementation:
https://safarileaks.com
There's absolutely nothing that a web browser maker could do about it. They fall victim to the exact same bugs that Safari does because they have to way to avoid it. Again, not real competition. They also broke localStorage in iOS 14.1 and took three months to fix it. Because there's nothing forcing their hand.
> The reasons for this are technical, not arbitrary or business related.
Oh my sweet summer child. Apple has many business incentives to push native solutions over web-based ones. We'll never know exactly what motivates them or why but to totally dismiss any business incentives at work here seems naive.
High performance browsers never could have been written in the first place if PCs had these restrictions in the '90s through mid 2000s.
Who knows what "application of the future" will not be viable on iOS etc. because they're afraid of writable executable pages or any other undue restrictions.
I do believe what I am saying about security is true, and it would be a non-trivial cost for Apple to have to start worrying about what happens if Chromium ships with a security bug, but at Apple scale it’s less about that cost and more about the complexity it introduces for no benefit to Apple.
To clarify I am not saying Apple’s decision is good. I think it’s very bad. I am just trying to see it from their perspective, and have to admit, it makes complete sense
Besides, you can say a lot of things about Firefox and Chrome - but high performance and memory and power efficient aren’t traits you assign to Chrome.
And from a technical standpoint, high performance browsers enabled the world to misuse HTML + JS to create applications, instead of being limited to documents like it was designed to do. As a developer, building native applications is a lot more fun trying to coerce the browser into doing what I want, because the underlying design actually does what you need it to. Unless "native" means "Windows", though, that has always been painful unless you use something like Qt.
Back in the 1990s,, when I used them, Macs had an "unending stream of viruses" too. DO they not these days? Does windoews still?
This is a false choice. How many of those viruses existed because you could, as a concept (not as a default), mark a page as executable at runtime? I'm going to say precisely none of them.
Note I agree that what Apple does is bad, but claiming that it prevents differentiation where it matters is simply not true.
Yes, yes. I'm well aware that there are many workarounds. Kids get around it. But, like the lock on your front door, its purpose is to give you a feeling of safety. And not to actually be safe.
I'm not willing to give Apple a pass on this major issue just because they'd have to slightly rework their Parental Controls.
At the monent, iOS being Safari/Webkit only is what keeps us having two engines with both having any real market share.
Safari would still be big on iOS because it has some very useful features and integrations that the competition doesn't offer. Apple's pseudo-TOR and lockdown mode are just two examples from the top of my head of things the competition isn't putting too much effort into. Microsoft has super-duper secure mode, but I don't think Edge users really care.
It will be cool if Apple opens the browser and app installation options allowing PWAs to run like iOS Apps (and all the people working with web apps will be happy).
My biggest concern with PWAs is that only ads are a viable business model for small utility apps.
The App Store rules are terrible (and give Apple too much power). But, it allows selling small utilities. In a world of PWAs, your monetization options are subscription, donation, or ads.
A subscription for a small tool doesn't make sense. Donations don't scale. Hence, the most probable option will be ads.
I agree with you. Having Safari as the only option for iOS is anti-competitive. But, honestly, the competition (Google) will love to have a world of apps relying on their ads infra. The first thing I'll do if I were Google is to add all the missing APIs to Chrome PWAs, so devs don't have a good reason to continue using the App Store. I don't love the idea of having ads and tracking in every little app.
I always find it interesting that Facebook and Google get trotted out as potential boogeymen whenever the topic of greater consumer choice on all computing platforms is brought up, because such arguments conveniently downplay the very real and actually present enemy to user freedom that is Apple literally dictating what products consumers are allowed to use on their own devices.
It's not about competition in browser choices as an iOS user. I'm talking about more diversity across platforms, as opposed to a single engine everywhere, and especially about who'd control that engine (if the single engine was some FOSS one, created by strong community or cross-industry collaboration, I'd might be ok with that).
So, iOS being Webkit only, means it's still more competition than Chrome/Google dictating everything about the web, and taking it into whatever direction it pleased it.
At least now websites NEED to be compatible with iOS, and Google still needs to at least somewhat pretend to care for web standards, and it also means whatever Google unilatery pushes as a new web API or feature doesn't just get adopted by everybody.
https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-...
This occurs time and time again.
I also own my car, but not surprisingly Tesla won’t have anything to do with me if I replace the batteries with ones from a different producer, because even though I own it, they get the bad PR when it blows up. But of cause I have the legal right to do so, just like you have the legal right to jailbreak your iPhone. Just don’t expect the original company to be of any help to you.
https://electrek.co/2020/08/22/tesla-fights-back-against-own...
If you're not asking rhetorically, that's one of the primary subjects of this report.
One takeaway that is important, IMO, is this one:
> Without browser diversity, a single company’s influence can shape the internet.
That would be a problem if iOS accounts for a large majority of all http traffic. That, however, is not the case. If there's one platform that accounts for the large majority of http traffic, it is Chrome. It's estimated market share is 65%. Its derivates take 10% more.
Allowing Chrome on iOS will slowly but surely obliterate Safari. Firefox' market share is a joke to begin with (and I say this as a lifelong Firefox user; I even use Firefox on iOS). Browser diversity ends when Chrome arrives on iOS, and it would end the limited privacy we have on iOS, unless Apple would really tighten the rules.
Why would allowing more browser engines have even the slightest impact on that? Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
Allowing more browser engines would require granting those engines your battery and gyroscope data in order for them to display per-site permission dialogs.
This problem is unique to browser engines and no other kind of app, as browser engines are uniquely the only kind of app that needs this sort of permissions-granting per-site passthrough.
Apple likely does not consider it interesting or relevant to their users to invest in validating the security models of third-party browser engines for their adherence to App Store standards, nor in providing a public API for third party engines to do so, and so closes off the entire problem space by refusing third-party engines altogether.
...a process which could be reviewed as part of the App Store review process.
There isn't really any difference here. If your app reads gyroscope data App Store review will (theoretically!) make sure you're not doing anything nefarious with it. They could just as easily verify whether a browser passes data through correctly.
(I’m aware of what drawbacks result from it, but that’s been explained to death in a thousand replies in a hundred posts about this already, so no need to derail into them here.)
https://safarileaks.com/
Apple did issue a fix after a few weeks but with no alternative browser engines the only alternative was “don’t use the web on your iPhone”, which is absurd.
Other user benefits might include better performance, more capabilities (it took Apple years to implement WebRTC, for example) and in general more competition that might spur Safari into becoming a better browser.
> What benefits to their users result from that choice?
But now we've gotten to
> I expect a better case will need to be made to convince Apple
Those aren't nearly the same things. Of course it's difficult to convince Apple, it isn't in their interests.
You may choose here to strengthen your argument, but your declaration that it’s hopeless to do so is of no help in that regard. If you wish to continue, I’m willing to listen.
> Those are APIs available to all native apps they have literally nothing to do with underlying browser engines.
Except that Safari doesn't expose them while Chrome wants to (or already does), offering Google more fingerprinting capabilities. Native apps don't send data to Google, Chrome does.
The problem is that Apple is slow to implement useful web standards. I don’t think the battery API is all that useful either but WebRTC is incredibly useful and it took Apple years to catch up. If they had meaningful competition in the iOS browser space they’d have more incentive to try.
You're looking at one extreme where the OS must hold the user's hand to get them to install alternatives. But that's not what users deserve. They just deserve to have the ability to choose to install what they want, rather than it being blocked, or deceptively hidden.
See this from the article:
> Operating systems regularly design their systems to undermine rather than facilitate consumer choice: they can make it difficult to change default settings; they can make it hard to install new browsers; they can deploy nudges and deceptive messaging to push consumers to their own products.
Are you perhaps thinking of iOS?
Or are you trying to make some point I'm missing?
They seem to treat "professionals" and "users" the same in iOS. Maybe there is a counterfactual world where Apple does even better by treating "professionals" differently? If anything people, "professionals" or not, have long pulled iOS into enterprise contexts despite lagging and lackluster IT management support and Apple coop with corp IT.
if you couldn't install cs suite or final cut or whatever, because apple comes with its own default stuff, no one would use osx.
I can't install my own browsers, my own antivirus, my own file explorer, my own shell, or my own applications in iOS as I see fit. but they do allow this on osx.
> If Apple treated their bundled calculators, text editors, email software, photo viewers and PDF viewers like they treated their browser, nobody would use MacOS.
Clearly some words must be missing.
(comment copied from when this was posted the first time a couple days ago)
Because we're out of options. Apple pushed us all here by crying "there's no other way" when people question their monopoly over app distribution. If you want browsers to be less complex, then you should advocate for the free distribution of software so the web isn't the only viable place to deliver you content.
You can say the complexity is required to compete, but I stick with Safari because it is simple, and fast, and doesn't gorge itself on system memory.
Under "Security and Privacy," it looks like both do fine. Firefox pledges to "Block cryptomining scripts," which... I have Ghostery installed, so I think I'm probably safe there. Other than that there are some sister-products I could install, and Firefox is cross-platform, but I have MacOS and iOS, so I guess no win there.
Under "Utility," I'm missing "Autoplay blocking," except... no, that's in Safari as well. I can "Allow All Auto-Play," "Stop Media with Sound," or "Never Auto-Play," and set that per website, too. Maybe that's just out-of-date. (Ah yes, comparison is based on Safari 14, I am running 15.5) For the rest, Firefox seems to begrudgingly give a nod to Safari here, suggesting extensions to try to make up for functionality Firefox lacks natively. But it does suggest Firefox's screenshots feature, which... MacOS has handy keyboard shortcuts for screenshots already, and lots of options about where and how to save the results, so I'm not sure why I'd want to use something different for Firefox than I use for everything else.
Next up is "Portability," but since I'm already in the Apple ecosystem for both work and home, this does nothing for me.
So nope, still nothing that suggests I should try again.
It's funny, the thing I remember most from when I last used Firefox a couple of years ago was "Multi-Account Containers," but I see now that was an add-on, not native to the browser proper.
In any case, I'm glad Firefox exists, because more choice is always good! I mean, would I now have tab groups in Safari if some other company hadn't done something similar first? So carry on, Firefox, Brave, etc. Meanwhile, I'll stick with Safari to help ensure that at least one browser survives against Chrome.
0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browsers/compare/safar...
commodity != competitive
If anything the low margin of a commodity market freezes innovation and participation. If anything the period leading up to monopoly is the best for innovation and participation. The monopoly company takes its winnings for a time and then loses its shine as it matures and a new paradigm takes over.
Like you said, Mozilla has an unhealthy revenue model from the cartel. If anything they act as sock puppet competition for Google, a subsidiary save in name out of monopsony.
Still, in 2020, Mozilla Corporation’s revenue was $466 million from its search partnerships (largely driven by its search deal with Google), subscriptions and advertising revenue.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/13/mozilla-expects-to-generat...
I think the challenge for F/OSS user and privacy-focussed browsers is an environment where a living can't be made with it through licensing/subscriptions. Pureblood Gnu is fine for folks with academic sinecures, but without cash, the bazaar is bare. Brave is making an effort as is the Neeva search engine, probably others too.
https://neeva.com/index
It is, but as long as we allow a single party to grossly bloat HTML, http and DNS (ie DoH, http/3) plus driving CSS ad absurdum over the course of 25 years, not to speak of JS APIs, there's not even a theoretical chance of new browsers emerging, since by the time those efforts can be completed, they're obsolete. And Mozilla is complicit in this, yet want to lecture us about the open web and stuff.
iOS does not allow you to install an alternate browser engine.
Windows does not allow you to remove Edge.
That's very different from an extension or toolbar button that you can easily turn off or replace.
To abuse the comparison further, Firefox does not allow you to uninstall the pocket addon.
Mozilla needs to be held to the same standards they're attempting to hold others too.
It seems you missed stuff like:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/11/latest_windows_11_bui...
https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/microsoft-edge-protocol-competit...
Same with #2 apparently, because again, it happily opens links from other applications in Firefox for me.
As of Windows 11 build 22000.978
Perhaps it should be bifurcated into a HyperCard-like browser and a fully functional client. Of course the HC-like version would likely die the same death as the 5kb website contest [0].
[0] https://www.the5k.org/
would be ironic if Mozilla played the next Netscape
Good* plot for a sci-fi book, that.
I see the polls, I understand the concern, but Mozilla probably should focus on why the 46% of people who do know how to replace their default browser almost universally choose to replace it with Chrome, rather than Firefox.
0. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
On Chrome, open chrome://gpu which will tell you various things about its use of your GPU.
I'm not aware of an equivalent page for Firefox but opening about:support should somewhere inform you of the compositor, which when it says "WebRender" also makes use of your GPU.
1. It's advertised on the two most popular search engines.
2. Microsoft doesn't include Chrome in Windows, but a lot of Windows OEMs pre-install Chrome.
In any case Chrome's dominance is more about Microsoft's failings than Mozilla's.
People who throw rocks shouldn't live in glass houses.
Mobile client ads on the home screen, heavily pushed VPN service, forced integration with networked bookmark services, "experiments" that don't check for privacy issues, default search using Google, and a long history of being reactive, not proactive, when it comes to privacy issues - these are just a handful of the problems that Firefox is currently mishandling.
Firefox is in many ways better than Chrome, Safari, and Edge, but it's not exactly a shining paragon of privacy and ethics either. I'd personally prefer that you clean up your house first, please.
Perhaps, but I find it deeply hypocritical for them to be attacking others when they behave nearly as badly as well (tell me how I can uninstall pocket, not just hide it).
> they're still massively better in every aspect than all of their competitors
"in every aspect" Not in power consumption on MacOS, and not in development tools, when compared to Chrome. Just to name two.
Plus, even if they were on top, being on top should never exclude them from criticism.
> are the only mobile browser that allows blocking ads
They are not, in particular on iOS. Safari, and by association all browsers on IOS, can block ads via content blockers.
The only thing that will kill the debate is if - like modern US politics - we're all too firmly entrenched in our own camps to accept another camp's point of view.
Who would want to use iOS after it was Windowized for browser freedom?
>>> Try a fast, secure browser with updates built in.
----> Bing.com, or any other Microsoft service
>>> Microsoft Recommends Edge Browser for Windows 11/10.
----> When setting a default browser
>>> Microsoft recommends that you keep Edge as the default browser
----> Apple OSX
>>> Try the new Safari - A fast, energy efficient, with a beautiful design.
Ironically, all these 3 browsers have some serious shortcomings like heavy telemetry, tracking, or having a completely out-of-the-loop user experience.
This is why we need to switch to non-profit OSS like Firefox. Brave is also a good choice but not a non-profit.
No it's not, as regardless of how bad all the commercial software is, when the general population just wants to go to Facebook, YouTube and watch porn, no browser switching of any kind is going to improve that. You can assume that most computer-users aren't in it for some ideological, privacy or security concept, they just want to consume some content and move on.
If one cares more about OSS than UXP, then by all means, go full-Stallman. I just don't think there are very many people who care that much, which is why Chrome is as popular as it is.
For me, if I can get done what I wanted to get done, and no malware foothold was created, I really don't care about the rest.
And then again forced by EU to offer alternative browsers, on start.
I guess what they say is that unlike MSFT in the 90s, they don’t have a monopoly, which makes it fine?
The modern web is the issue and the proof that Xerox time Desktop systems were the best solution we have ever created.
I admit that I'm not using Firefox by default now (when I've used it, it worked fine), but it seems that many others here have real gripes with how Firefox works as a default browser, and are basically saying "Mozilla can blame themselves for being marginal".
Can someone ELI5 what Mozilla did to deserve this derision?
Also MDN is an awesome and invaluable resource [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
[2] https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19990217&slug...
[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
I would say its because Mozilla isn't the incorruptible champion of web browsing. Yes, they have done bad decisions, bad(and good) products have been axed that are unrelated to a browser, and they have being influenced by political issues because, well, people work at Mozilla and people get to be influenced by that. So bad impressions triumph over any campaign they have done, like the ones quoted from the article below.
Browsers and the Quest for More Private Advertising
- 2009 - Mozilla leads the Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) Working Group at W3C. This is a signal sent by the browser to websites indicating that the user does not wish to be tracked online. All major browsers implement DNT. The advertising industry fails to adopt DNT and the initiative ultimately fails.
- 2015 - Firefox launches “Tracking Protection.” This was an important but small step. It is off by default and blocks ads that track. 2018 - Firefox launches Facebook Container based on several months of work to isolate first party cookies.96 This is another small step forward against tracking.
- 2019 - Firefox launches with Enhanced Tracking Protection (“ETP”) based on learnings from earlier efforts alongside an “anti-tracking policy”.97 ETP is a success, and drives all major browsers except Chrome to implement similar features.
- 2020 - Firefox blocks third-party fingerprinting resources98 and includes pro- tections against redirect tracking.99 Mozilla leads the formation of the Privacy Community Group at the W3C.100
- 2021 - Firefox takes on supercookies,101 introduces Total Cookie Protection,102 and trims HTTP Referrers to protect privacy.103 Mozilla leads the formation of the Privacy Advertising Technology Community Group at the W3C.104
- 2022 - Firefox launches Total Cookie Protection by default105 and adds manual protections against link decoration.106 Mozilla continues work on Privacy Pre- serving Advertising107 through both criticism of and collaboration with Google, Apple, Meta and others.
Mozilla told its core audience to go away.
Firefox's worst enemy is Mozilla.
Assuming Mozilla is talking about operating systems and how they mandate or encourage their own in-house offerings in lieu of third-party offerings, I'd say Mozilla is being a hypocrite.
Firefox usurped IE6 at a time when all odds were against them, and Chrome today continues to overcome all such factors at play (only Android has Chrome as the default browser). Mozilla's very own history demonstrates that operating system lock-ins do not prevent an eventual change in the browser market leader.
So yes, I would say their history of misguidance undermines their own arguments. Mozilla has an inferior product, which once was a superior product, and they are now groveling with pedantics because they can't once again ship a superior product (specifically, superior to Chrome) to reobtain market share.
Whatever Mozilla wants to say or is saying here, they are the words of a loser who does not understand why he is losing, made even worse because the loser was once before a winner heralded as the saviour of worlds.
Okay, thanks for the info, but I’d be careful with the word “rant”
Assumption: People have troubles with certain web applications like MS teams, goto-meeting,.. or youtube. Mozilla has to adapt to undocumented changes. There are an increasing amount of applications which do not support firefox (strange, because the web should be browser independent). People think Mozilla is responsible for this.
Mozilla does not generate income with Firefox (besides dontations!). Why is it so important to have the biggest market share with a browser? I suppose there is data to be collected by the other players.
It's not just OS vendors, it hasn't helped that more and more companies are just targeting/supporting chrome. They'll ship & test on chrome as tier1, not firefox... not that it wouldn't work, but again, it'll be "should or might work".