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.
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.
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.