Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.

It’s an early sign that Europe’s competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely.

  • shinratdr@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    Yeah nobody is on the other side of this issue. They literally FORCE you to choose a browser, how would that ever result in anything but a bump for alternative browsers?

    Bigger issue is, how many people just went right to Chrome? Mobile Safari and its massive chunk of e-commerce sales is about the only thing causing businesses to not just code for Chrome and call it a day. You don’t want more mobile or desktop Chrome users, period.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      There was no genuine competition on browsers before in iOS, now there is.

      It’s quite irrelevant for the subject of competition if the reduction of the market share of the browser that had no competition due to artifical barriers (Safari) goes mostly to the browser with the most overall market share (Chrome) or not as long as it happens via competition.

      Your point only makes sense if this was about “diversity” in the browser market (in which case it’s absolutely valid to think that this might very well reduce it), however competition-wise, any consumer choice always means more competition than no consumer choice.

      That said, on the competition side this does raise a question about user-friendly browser selection in Android.

      • rebelsimile
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, so, you talk about the difference between skepticism and denialism and then here’s a bunch of denialism. Competition is good overall but the ruling (Apple must open to more competition) is only more competition in a very narrow view. What the other poster is saying is that while the smaller universe of iOS may be opened to competition, if it ends up flooding iOS with nothing-but-Chrome that could have broad, deleterious effects, which you seem to not want to acknowledge (that’s the denialism part).

        YES, opening iOS brings “more competition” into iOS, but also, zooming out one click, also enhances the web monopoly that Chrome is trying to build which will possibly have the long-term consequence of forcing everyone to migrate over to one browser only (Chrome). Not because users think its the best, but because it is so ubiquitous that no one develops for any other browser. Don’t you see the unintended risk of feeding Google’s monopoly is also bad?