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Things might only work fine now because people are forced to test mobile apps in Safari. If Safari’s market share drops significantly over a 3-5 year period, yo

Things might only work fine now because people are forced to test mobile apps in Safari. If Safari’s market share drops significantly over a 3-5 year period, you might see “Works best in Chrome” start to appear again… I get it though. Every so often I find a site that works well in both Safari and Chrome due to WebKit but doesn’t work in Firefox. It’s pretty rare, but it happens.

jeroenhd 4y ago
I don't think Safari's market share will drop as much as Firefox's did. Safari brings some features for mac/iOS users that Chrome struggles to emulate. The Apple's laser focus to make their stuff work on their devices and their devices alone makes Safari have some decent value for people who bought into their ecosystem. If anything, I think it'll drive Apple to pay more attention to their browser. They can afford to leave their bug reports open because users don't have a choice in browser, but once they can't anymore, they'll have a reason to use some of their excessive wealth to improve their browser. Also remember that this law only applies to EU sales. Apple will likely still block real browsers in markets outside the EU just like they're setting up different systems for each government that takes action against their walled garden. Big web applications often come from the USA and they'll need to support the American general public.
- ridiculous_fish 4y ago
  On the flip side, you can expect Google to engage in a massive advertising campaign to push Chrome on iOS. I think Google would be very happy to enjoy the same level of Chrome marketshare on iOS as they do on Android.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    They already have significant marketshare on iOS. But there's only so much you can get without official first party control or favoritism, e.g. Google being the default search engine on browsers. An advertising campaign will pick up some more new users, sure, but this EU mandate doesn't really ramp things up unless an iOS Blink-based Chrome offers substantially better experience than the current WebKit-based Chrome.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I don't think Safari's market share will drop as much as Firefox's did. Safari brings some features for mac/iOS users that Chrome struggles to emulate. The Apple's laser focus to make their stuff work on their devices and their devices alone makes Safari have some decent value for people who bought into their ecosystem. If anything, I think it'll drive Apple to pay more attention to their browser. They can afford to leave their bug reports open because users don't have a choice in browser, but once they can't anymore, they'll have a reason to use some of their excessive wealth to improve their browser. Also remember that this law only applies to EU sales. Apple will likely still block real browsers in markets outside the EU just like they're setting up different systems for each government that takes action against their walled garden. Big web applications often come from the USA and they'll need to support the American general public.

ridiculous_fish 4y ago
On the flip side, you can expect Google to engage in a massive advertising campaign to push Chrome on iOS. I think Google would be very happy to enjoy the same level of Chrome marketshare on iOS as they do on Android.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  They already have significant marketshare on iOS. But there's only so much you can get without official first party control or favoritism, e.g. Google being the default search engine on browsers. An advertising campaign will pick up some more new users, sure, but this EU mandate doesn't really ramp things up unless an iOS Blink-based Chrome offers substantially better experience than the current WebKit-based Chrome.