Context: Yesterday the European Commission (EC) launched a handful of Digital Markets Act (DMA) non-compliance investigations (March 25, 2024 games fray article). Two of the investigations (plus a third one that is at an earlier, less formal stage) target Apple. One of them is about user choice between browsers.
What’s new: At a closer look, the EC’s announcement means that the Apple browser investigation is, per se, uncapable of promoting competition and consumer choice. It tackles a user interface issue that may have merit, but the actual technology issues run far deeper. The scope of the investigation appears completely disconnected from the strategically important question of home-screen web apps (also called Progressive Web Apps).
Direct impact: 2024 is not only a lost year for opening up iOS app distribution (as the previous article noted) but apparently also for the Open Web with respect to iOS. It cannot be ruled out entirely, however, that the EC has a longer-term “piecemeal” strategy that could, step by step, also tackle the more pressing issues concerning iOS browsers rather than content itself with pure cosmetics and minor market share shifts between browsers, but not between engines.
Wider ramifications: The UK Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the iOS browser issue under traditional competition rules (after an appeals court revived a market investigation) and with a focus on engines rather than choice screens. Depending on how forcefully the CMA will act versus how soon the EC will tackle the more fundamental browser issues on iOS, it’s fairly possible that progress will be made in the UK before anything important happens in the EU.
The DMA correctly identifies the iOS browser engine monopoly problem in its Recital 43 and mandates browser engine choice in Art. 5(7). However, the investigation launched yesterday is purely related to the much less important question of setting a default browser:
Apple’s compliance with user choice obligations
The Commission has opened proceedings against Apple regarding their measures to comply with obligations to (i) enable end users to easily uninstall any software applications on iOS, (ii) easily change default settings on iOS and (iii) prompt users with choice screens which must effectively and easily allow them to select an alternative default service, such as a browser or search engine on their iPhones.
The Commission is concerned that Apple’s measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.
The design of the web browser choice screen was also discussed at last week’s Apple DMA Enforcement Workshop in Brussels. Such choice screens can make a difference, but only if there actually is choice. Otherwise, negotiating with Apple about tweaks to the user interface design amounts to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Even for the mere purpose of increasing the extent to which non-Apple browsers are used, the choice screen itself is just one element. It was correctly stated at last week’s workshop that Safari is, by default, on the iPhone home screen, and any other browser will be installed on a subsequent page of the multi-page app menu, so users will continue to tap very often on the Safari icon. Apple’s argument is that users are free to rearrange those icons (or even to delete Safari). But if it’s not done automatically as a result of a different default browser choice, it won’t happen often in practice. Whether one can read into the DMA an obligation for Apple to put a new default browser on the home screen is another question. It’s not an unreasonable position to take, but wouldn’t be a slam dunk in court.
Long before the workshop, the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox) and Google (Chrome) criticized Apple’s EU browser rules (February 5, 2024 Ars Technica article). Their concerns were at the technological heart of the issue: Mozilla said Apple’s rules make it “as painful as possible” to offer browsers with alternative engines, and Google said Apple isn’t serious about browser and engine choice, but instead designed rules that “won’t meaningfully lead to real choice for browser developers.”
That sounds like browser makers are strongly discouraged from porting any other browser engine (such as Chromium) to iOS. They could offer it only in the EU anyway, a limitation that is inherent to legislation that applies only to the EU Single Market, but on top of which there appear to be various other issues unnecessarily created by Apple.
It was a good thing that Apple quickly brought back home-screen web apps (March 1, 2024 games fray article), but it allows them to run only on WebKit, the engine of Apple’s Safari browser. The single greatest opportunity for browsers with better engines than WebKit will be home-screen web apps. Productivity apps, customer loyalty apps (Starbucks etc.), web games and web-based streaming have the potential to present viable alternatives to native apps, but only if they are executed by a first-rate browser engine.
Looking only at what the EC announced and what is known about some more pressing issues, one can’t help but conclude that the EU browser choice investigation is actually a gift to Apple. It means Apple can delay things (as the EC’s enforcement resources are limited), make some concessions that may very well settle that investigation, and Apple will still maintain its death grip on web apps on iOS.
But let’s give the EC the benefit of the doubt:
The fact that non-WebKit browsers can’t execute home-screen web apps at the moment is irrelevant because no such alternatives are on the market yet. There still is time for Apple to fix the problem, and Apple will probably have to make changes to the operating system in order to be consistent with its own past representations concerning the need to safely sandbox web apps (which browsers like Google Chrome can do, and probably do a lot better, than any Apple technology, but admittedly there could also be bad browsers). So the home-screen web app part of the story may still take a positive turn.
It’s also possible that the EC is quite prepared to tackle that problem at a subsequent stage. Maybe the browser choice investigation is, in light of resource constraints, the best the EC can do in the short term, but the message to Apple is that there’ll be more to come to defend the idea of a reasonably open web.
It still looks like a waste of time and a lost opportunity that they didn’t start a more comprehensive browser investigation with at least two thirds of the focus on engines (which includes the execution of home-screen web apps by rival browser engines).