Apple makes concessions on browser options in EU

Analysis Apple has agreed to change the way it implements web browser choice screens and browser capabilities to comply with Europe’s monopoly-busting Digital Markets Act.

The changes, limited to users of iOS and iPadOS in the 27 EU member countries, follow the European Commission’s decision in March to open a probe into Apple’s compliance with the competition-fostering law.

Open Web Advocacy (OWA), a group formed to advance the interests of web developers, welcomed Apple’s concessions, noting that the iPhone maker has adopted six of its 11 recommendations to meet the DMA requirements.

What’s more, Apple has dropped what OWA characterizes as “two severe and deliberate deceptive patterns” that put competing browsers at a disadvantage. One of these patterns hid the option to change the default browser when Safari was set as the default. The other triggered the browser choice screen only when Safari was not the default browser. That’s good news for Euro users.

Users want choice, and it should be their choice to determine which browser they’d like to use

“We’re pleased to see that Apple will be providing an easy-to-use choice screen to users in the EU for browser options, with the options placed on a fair and nondiscriminatory basis (no pay to play),” said Brave Software CEO Brendan Eich in an email to The Register. The outfit offers the open source web browser Brave.

“Users want choice, and it should be their choice to determine which browser they’d like to use. Providing choice also benefits browser companies, which is essential to make sure the Web stays open, user-first, and competitive. We saw this recently in March when the daily installs for Brave on iOS in the EU went up 50 percent with the new browser choice panel, following the implementation of the DMA and release of iOS 17.4.”

While progress welcomed, more work remains

Amid a broad attempt to dismantle Apple’s iOS platform rules through antitrust litigation and the lobbying of regulators that has been underway since Epic Games sued Apple in 2020, Apple has argued that web apps represent viable competition to native iOS apps. That is to say, Apple has argued that regardless of its control of the iOS software world, people can always build and run browser-based apps on its devices.

Yet web developers have argued for years that web apps on iOS are hobbled by technical limitations.

Those limitations have started to come undone, alongside other Apple restrictions, such as its contractual rule that forbid third-party developers from informing users of their apps about external payment options – something now allowed, though with a 27 percent commission (or 12 percent for small business program participants) to Cupertino if that route is taken.

That said, many barriers remain that prevent web apps from being truly competitive with native apps, both on a technical level and in terms of visibility. Five of OWA’s recommendations have yet to be implemented. Arguably, the most significant of these would be requiring in-app browsers (web capabilities embedded in native iOS apps) to use the chosen default browser rather than Apple’s Safari.

“These changes are EU only,” said OWA in a blog post. “Apple’s users in other countries do not gain any direct benefit from these remedies. We urge regulators in other countries to carefully examine these changes and consider compelling Apple to implement them in their own jurisdictions.”

We live in hope, but are not holding our breath, that software developers in other jurisdictions will gain access to the options being opened up in Europe.

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority has been conducting an investigation into mobile browsers and cloud gaming since June 2022. Apple managed to have the probe shuttered briefly but the CMA appealed and prevailed, so the investigation resumed.

The CMA on August 8 published a set of potential remedies [PDF] to address its competition concerns with regard to browsers and cloud gaming. But concern remains in the web community that the CMA will fail to require Apple to take the steps necessary to put web apps on equal footing with native apps.

Just this week, the CMA dropped two long-running probes into Google and Apple’s official app stores, in which the watchdog was looking into whether the marketplaces’ fine-print was unfair to software makers. The CMA said it may use fresh powers given to it via the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which became UK law in May, to continue that line of investigation into the American duo.

“The fixes are good, thanks CMA,” wrote Bruce Lawson, a web developer and one of the founders of OWA, on Thursday in response to the remedies suggested by the British watchdog regarding browsers and gaming.

“But I’m worried they don’t go far enough, or aren’t specific enough, to avoid the kind of malicious compliance from Apple that we’ve been seeing in the EU as it attempts to wriggle around the Digital Markets Act.”

Lawson, who resigned from the OWA board in June to join browser maker Vivaldi, would like to see Apple make several additional accommodations. Among them, he points to the absence of any guarantee that web apps will be run by the browser engine that downloaded them.

“Web apps” here refers to what Apple calls Home Screen apps and others call Progressive Web Apps or PWAs. These web-based applications can be installed on mobile devices and interact with the hardware to gain capabilities like browser storage, push notifications, icon badging, and device APIs. As such, these web apps ought to behave in many ways like native mobile applications. And they should be equally visible at all times to mobile device users because they can be installed.

But on iOS, these web apps run atop Apple’s WebKit engine, even if the user has selected another browser like Brave, Chrome, Firefox, or Vivaldi as the default. And because WebKit doesn’t allow web apps to use Bluetooth, they can’t compete on a level playing field with native iOS apps that do.

“Apple is a master of malicious compliance, and would probably argue that it could fulfill CMA’s remedies by allowing browsers to use their own engine and providing them access to the share menu to install Apple’s WebKit implementation of Web Apps,” Lawson said.

“This is actually the current state of affairs in the EU; Apple tried to completely kill PWAs (which it calls ‘Homescreen Apps’) in Safari, so that it wouldn’t have to allow them in other engines. They backed down after a campaign by EU web developers, but (so far, at least) all PWAs on iOS will continue to be hamstrung by running in WebKit.”

Lawson argues that the CMA’s potential remedy to “grant equivalent access to APIs used by WebKit and Safari to browsers using alternative browser engines” is not enough because WebKit and Safari have not been granted the powers available to native apps. He argues the CMA should instead require “all APIs and device integrations available to native iOS Apps, Apple’s own apps and service must be available to third party browsers.”

The Register asked the CMA about these concerns – that its browser intervention might fall short of addressing the issues of web apps. We were pointed to remedy options A1-3, which aim to:

• (a) enable browsers operating on iOS to use a browser engine other than WebKit, should they wish to do so, and to access the necessary functionality to do so.
• (b) provide equivalent access to key features and functionalities that Safari has access to, including the ability to configure and customize these features.

We were told that this potential remedy aims to establish competition at the browser engine level, meaning that the failure of one browser engine to support certain capabilities would allow a browser vendor to select an alternative engine.

It remains to be seen how Apple might implement this requirement if it comes to that. ®