Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS 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 the Europe Union's competition rules may actually … get this … …
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> Maybe in the US where there are no laws to prevent that…
As if EU laws made sense… Just look at the stupidity of having to agree with cookies on every bloody website training uses to click OK without thinking or reading. This example clearly indicate that nothing good would come from EU rules, just a ton of unexpected consequences.
This is nothing to do with EU rules, and everything to do with websites desperately trying to make EU rules look somehow unreasonable.
I don't want any third-party cookies. At all. Fortunately there are browsers which understand this. But they are (sadly) minority players, hence the rules.
It's a shame that all browsers don't follow this principle. Why don't they? Well, the fact that the biggest players are actually online advertising brokers might have something to do with it. This is what has to change.
-A.
Qui bono?
Somewhere along the line, web devs seem to have forgotten what they're doing all this dev for. When I taught web development (admittedly many years back) the first thing I said to the class was "remember, you're not developing this site for your client -- you're developing it for your client's customers. If you forget that and limit access by your design your client will lose business". That followed directly from the principle of client agnosticism enunciated by Tim Berners-Lee on 'day one' of the web. Now, unless you're using the recommended browser (brand and often even version) you're locked out of many sites, so they do indeed lose business.
Yup. If a site fails to load because of either my use of Firefox or my ad blocking, then I just leave. Their loss.
Unfortunately, you and I aren't the majority. When the user is faced with a pop-up saying "Hey, this works best in Chrome", a lot of them go and install Chrome - we know this, because it's exactly what's happened on desktop over the past 15 years. Ironically, iOS - through Apple's anti-competitive practices - did actually end up promoting web standards by requiring devs to think about "A N Other" browser that wasn't Chrome. Yes, it was webkit, but the fact it nudged devs back towards some sort of compliance with open standards also helped Firefox/Gecko.
We've already seen the way in which Google can dominate web standards - QUIC and HTTP/3 was a fait accompli because when Google made the unilateral decision to deploy it in Chrome and on Google/YouTube/GMail/etc, it basically said "Everyone else needs to be vaguely capable of playing nicely with this".
Now that Google is no longer beholden to the whims of Webkit, we can expect to see them wander off into a new era of ActiveX-alike functions pushed to Chrome. Not overnight, but eventually.
And "then I just leave" is not always so simple. What happens when your bank decides to use something Chrome-only for their online banking? Sure, you can shout and scream and (eventually) move to a new bank. But on that day, you're probably stuck installing Chrome so you can get the thing done that needs doing...
Maybe over on this (right hand) side of the ocean, the problem might be resolved by pointing at accessibility rules?
> QUIC and HTTP/3 was a fait accompli because when Google made the unilateral decision to deploy it in Chrome and on Google/YouTube/GMail/etc, it basically said "Everyone else needs to be vaguely capable of playing nicely with this".
Not everyone. Nobody is required to run a google server. Google can throw a fit if they like but it doesn't stop http/1.1 from working.
> What happens when your bank decides to use something Chrome-only for their online banking?
Ask yourself why you ever made a disinterested third party an essential part of your relationship with your bank?
Ask yourself why you ever made a disinterested third party an essential part of your relationship with your bank?
But you didn't decide. Your bank's CIO did when they outsourced their web site to a company who decided "to save money we will test/support only Chrome" which would be made possible if Apple was forced to support "full Chrome" browsers on iOS. The single digit percent of Firefox users will not concern them, they'll just make everyone download Chrome and use it if they want functioning access the website of their clients, including your bank.
How many people do you think would change banks over something like that? Especially with no guarantee your next bank wouldn't do the same thing? If you complained to your bank and they responded at all it would probably be "just download Chrome and use it for this site, it isn't that hard". One bank forcing the use of Chrome isn't a big deal, but the cumulative effect would be handing Google monopoly power over the web.
In fixing what arguably isn't even meaningful in terms of competition vis a vis Apple forcing third party browsers to use WebKit's engine instead of their own, the EU would create a competition problem easily 100x worse than what they had before. And it would be much much harder for them to fix since Google could argue that web sites are choosing to design for Chrome, and iPhone users are choosing to download Chrome.
When I was taught web design, the web was a much simpler place, but we were taught to code and test our sites on as many browsers as possible. We were taught to minimise the use of plugins as much as possible.
I don't design websites much in my day to day life, but when I do, I still test those sites on as many browsers, and as many platforms as I can. The experience for the user should be the same whatever browser or platform they are using. Practical considerations such as screen size aside..
One of my biggest complaints is when a website doesn't work, the answer I get from the company is, without exception, "just use Chrome". In other words, "just be like me". They use Chrome, therefore you use Chrome too. They have powerful computers that can easily handle javascript from 1001 different places, therefore you have a powerful computer too. They have ultra-fast internet, therefore you obtain and afford fast internet too. They understand how to use the web site, therefore you do too.
None of these new developers seem to understand that there are people out there who are different than them. If it works for them, they don't care about the people for whom it does not work for or the people who don't understand it. This goes beyond websites too ... I'm looking at you Microsoft.
Great post, but don't go pointing fingers just at MS whilst giving so many in the FOSS community a pass. Broken FOSS UI's, 'features' that are inane, and design bugs that get in the way of user experience, aren't just MS programmer exclusives.
"I'm looking at you Microsoft."
And game devs! It's been an issue ever since the IBM AT came out, faster and more expensive than an XT :-)
CPU power, RAM volume and GFX capabilities for new games always seem to be that much faster/higher/better than most users have.
Not just with games, but especially with games, I've always been of the opinion that the game/app should be developed using systems specced to the minimum system requirements. Then you don't even need "recommended" listings because if the game/app is playable/usable on the "minimum" it will always scale up better than it scales down. None of this shit where you give the devs some absolute bleeding edge level system for their dev work. You can have a really nice powerful server with a metric shittonne of cores to compile the code, but when the devs are testing their work, it's done on systems that will be considered the minimum requirements later.
"unless you're using the recommended browser (brand and often even version) you're locked out of many sites"
Updating a professional licence recently I was dismayed to find it's now all "in the app" - you don't get a certificate and a little plastic ID card any more, you have to download an app on to your phone and sign up etc.
Problem 1, I don't have a Google account, so the Play Store is off limits
Problem 1a, a colleague who would normally be renewing his licence too, but not this time for various reasons, doesn't even have a smartphone
Problem 1b (of sorts) - for work, I'd rather not use a personal phone and don't have a work phone, but this is more like a driving licence and is "mine", not the company's.
Problem 2, once I'd found a copy of the app elsewhere (and done as much due-dilligence as possible), the thing refused to allow me to create an account. It tries to launch a web browser (why can't the whole process be done on the web site, negating the need for an app at all?) but although I have three installed on my phone, it said "no browser found for login".
So I've just spent a day of company time and goodness knows how much company training budget and am left with nothing to show for it. I think it's possible for the company to ask for a physical certificate for their records, but whether they'd let me take it, dunno.
Last sentence deserves an upvote. The rest is kind of annoying and almost deserves a downvote (in reality, I'd like to block all of Google myself, but it's a good way to irritate your friends – personally, I have an isolated guest network anyway, so why not set different rules if you must?). These cancelled each other out, so I didn't click either.
Back in the day Firefox was my browser of choice, as an experiment, I went back to Firefox for a month, sadly, now uninstalled and back to Edge. It just didn't work as well as Edge and the design was clunky and slow, maybe I long for the old Firefox days when the design was simplistic/usable and its performance was equal or better to the others and of course plugins for everything the user wanted.
"It just didn't work as well as Edge and the design was clunky and slow,"
Or, maybe, Edge is much more tightly integrated into the OS that by definition it's going to work better in some circumstances. There are parts of Windows where no matter your default browser choice, MS STILL uses Edge, despite your choice. ie exactly the behaviour that forced the EU browser choice on MS back in 2010. Their spots haven't changed, they just temporarily covered them over and now the camouflage is degrading while they hope that enough people in the EU have forgotten and it might take yet another 5-10 years to take action.
Every time someone dares say that they liked the old Firefox but have since moved on to Brave, an army of Firefox fans piles on with the downvotes. Every other browser gets its full share of rightful criticism here, but there is a certain kind of Firefox fan that thinks their preferred browser is above reproach.
Have an upvote, Tubz. Everyone ought to be able to report what does and doesn't work for them.
I pretty much use Firefox for everything. The only exception is Google Ad shite for which I use Chrome. I've found Firefox clean and quick, OK it needs some tweaking to get it running as you want but it is independent and not based on Chrome. Got FF on Linux, iOS, MacOs and the MS shizz. I just wish Edge would uncouple from Windows, that's an aggravating browser. FireFox has a wonder Facebook fence plugin, stops Meta tracking your stuff. It's worth it just for that!
I do wish that they kept going with their own rendering engine, just because Chromium rendering almost everything is not good for anyone. But it was removing necessary features that really killed it for me, so Vivaldi it is. And if I'm gonna use something Safari-based, iCab is quite nice, and I don't mind paying for shareware to support someone's long-term passion project.
Speaking purely for myself, after all that woke Gemini nonsense from the other week I decided to ditch Google as much as possible and I decided to go with Brave, with it being based on Chromium. I have to say so far I've been very happy with my choice - everything just works and I'm loosening myself from Google's tentacles.
Yup, Brave and Mullvad good choices.
https://privacytests.org/
Google also a no go for rampant privacy intrusion.
Likewise have an aversion to woke propaganda (the most tedious) but all forms of ideological, political or otherwise propaganda.
In times gone by you could just agree to disagree.
I wouldn't trust their results. Conveniently, on Brave Android, they somehow 'forget' to mention Brave itself contacting computer.amazonaws.com, 93.184.215.80, nya.yahoo.com, wikimedia.org, 151.10.45.16, 151.101.210.206, fbcdn.net, akamaitechnologies.com and cloudfront.net at every restart.
Yes, because being conscious and aware are such bad things.
What Google, Silicon Valley as a whole, and generally Hollywood are doing is pure performative nonsense. They want to be seen as "doing something" and too busy patting themselves on the backs for a bit of theatre to even be aware of how many societal problems they're exacerbating. They're the TSA of social progress. If I didn't know better, I'd think these tech bros actually were pod-people acting like they think humans should.
It really is impossible to take anyone talking about a "woke agenda" seriously, and the people screaming about it the loudest are banning books that connect with kids who have experienced discrimination and harassment, threatening retail workers at places like Target, whitewashing parts of our history that we need to confront, trying to put women back in the kitchen and erase LGBT+ people entirely. Even as an adult, the level of harassment and even direct physical threats in the past year are worse than they were twenty years ago because of "anti-woke" crusaders.
Woke means:
Policing people's language (and their by discriminating against people from the wrong backgrounds, especially non-native English speakers and immigrants), banning books because you do not like the ideas in them, hounding people of of their jobs because they disagree with you, imposing American cultural norms on the rest of the world (words like "master" in version control, or "blacklist" are banned in international projects and companies purely because of their role in American history and culture).
Essentially work is an oppressive and cultural imperialist movement.
In comparison to ultra-right fascists??
BOTH sides are beyond help and the rest of us have had just about ENOUGH of them. Whilst a conservative would most certainly call me "liberal", as a (classic, middle of the road) moderate-liberal I got my first deep, true experience with a 'woke-head' last year - and I am fully behind labeling them a radical group of reactionary fools.
But don't go thinking that the ultra-right get a free pass in this!! If anything, thanks to Reaganism / Thatherism, it is extremely reliable to say that they caused the outbreak of the woke ultra-left, as The Old Man / Old Woman certainly came decades before. And the fundamentalist ultra-right is arguably even worse than the woke-heads...and that's saying an awful lot!
FFS, give the culture war bullshit a rest already. The reason people don't want to associate with you isn't because they're "woke" it's because you're an asshole. It's not them, it's you. It's always been you, and will always be you unless you are willing to put in the time and effort to change. Save the virtue signaling for the next klan rally.
I don't know about buying your iPhone from NI - you might have to live there in order to get the browser choice screen? Or, knowing Apple, they'll have not bothered with that edge case - and will ignore it until forced to comply. Doesn't work for iPads though - Apple aren't offereing anyone the browser choice on those.
I'm not sure if people in NI get this feature, but I do know that buying it there and bringing it back means you don't get it. Your current location, not purchase location, is used to see if you have the right to use those features, so much that if you leave the EU for long enough, you lose them. I'm also not really sure that people in NI would get it. I understand that there are trade regulations in common with the EU, but it doesn't make every EU law apply, and the DMA would have to be applicable law for NI to be included.
Norn Iron is formally part of the EU single market, as such the same rules Apple has to abide by elsewhere in the EU. In GB, although the relevant EU rules (articles 101 and 102 of TEFU) don't now apply, the GB implemented the same rules through chapters 1 & 2 of the Competition Act 1998 that is still in force, so for the time being the situation should be much the same, although enforcement is undertaken by the CMA not the European Commission.
Apple could try refuse to offer choice to GB customers, if that went to the courts then I'd expect them to lose as the rules are near enough the same. The CMA have a Digital Markets Unit, I've no doubt they'll be watching what Apple do, and if they don't implement browser choice I daresay they'll be subject to action.
It might work if you set up your account with an EU address and make sure your network traffic always comes from there. Depending on what you do, you may not appreciate the transatlantic latency for all communication. However, if Apple doesn't want you to use it badly enough, they can collect information about your connection (American mobile provider) and GPS location to determine that you're not actually over there, so don't count on it working now, and if it does work now, it can break at any time. I'm guessing that your best bet will be to wait until the next jailbreak comes out and see if you can unlock it from there.
The webkit only thing wouldn't be quite so bad if Apple actually bothered to keep it up to date with web standards. But, sort of like MS with Internet Explorer, they lost interest in it as soon as they became the dominate player. It wasn't until there was some competition that all of a sudden they decided it was worth putting some work into it.
"Google should not be able to decide what is the standard by simply unulaterally including it into their browser."
"This website works best with MSIE6. Actually, it ONLY works with MSIE6. And the special Active-X plug you can download ONLY from this site is mandatory. We recommand you use MSIE6 + the special Active-X plug-in to download the special Active-X plug-in"
Nobody outside IT even understands browser choice as an issue. They will happily stipulate 'use chrome' to minimise issues, cost and time.
If a bank stipulates chrome, what would Joe Public change? Their browser or the bank they have a mortgage with?
Forcing the choice is good, but might make little difference.
Maybe they could have a 'single click' choice for cookies so I don't have to click the 'accept all' button on every bloody website.
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