Comment by simondotau
7 months ago
The open web requires browser diversity in order to remain healthy, far more than it needs individuals to have browser choice. The former is important for the health of open standards; the latter only matters if you believe the web is whatever Google implements in Chrome.
Without healthy browser diversity, the web might as well be renamed the Chrome Protocol and the "browser choice" you care about so much is gone.
Android already has all of the things being demanded of Apple and there is no dawn of a new age. No demand for web apps. No demand for alternative browser engines. All that's there is the Chrome desert with a near-total market share and a sprinkling of alternative app stores that few trust or use.
It's a form of regulatory capture, coopting legislation to rid the market of remaining competition.
Again, that's an argument for browser choice. What matters to me is browser diversity, even if it must come at the expense of browser choice. Apple forcing the use of WebKit on iOS is the last meaningful backstop against a Chrome monoculture.
That's a deeply fallacious argument.
https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow...
It's not fallacious, that article is fallacious. By conflating choice and diversity, the article is poorly written and misrepresents the bigger picture. Browser diversity makes the internet better, while browser choice encourages developers to be lazy.
Developers exclusively targeting Chrome and forcing users to switch isn't browser choice, it just replaces one kind of non-choice with another kind of non-choice.