One perhaps (more) surprising finding from the report - which is entitled Five Walled Gardens: Why Browsers are Essential to the Internet and How Operating Systems Are Holding Them Back - is that U.S. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority signalled recently it’s intending to probe Apple and Google market power in mobile browsers, after taking a deep dive look at the mobile market, so scrutiny around browsers does look to be - finally, tardily - on the rise.įirefox gets a privacy boost as Total Cookie Protection becomes the default for all users (Examples cited in the report include a “recommended browser settings” pop-up which pushes consumers to pick Edge as their default browser by deploying messaging that implies the pre-selected choice is a necessary setting for security or the tech giant actively targeting Firefox users with an ad for Edge that appears as “suggested” content in the Windows start menu, alongside the message “Still using Firefox? Microsoft Edge is here”.)īut the visibility and extent of operating system lock-ins - combined with increasingly low diversity in browser engine technology - should act as a wake up call to regulators, galvanizing the case for intervention. Although some of the sneaky tactics it uses to promote its browser to users and actively discourage the downloading of alternatives might be new if you’re not a regular Windows user. Nor is it a news flash that Windows-maker Microsoft bundles its own Edge browser on desktops running its operating system. It’s hardly news that Google bundles Chrome with Android and Apple preloads Safari on iOS and that most mobile users won’t bother changing those defaults - especially as neither mobile platform makes it easy to switch default browser, even as their brand name familiarity exerts its own stickiness discouraging consumers from seeking out smaller, less well known alternatives. Perhaps the most striking thing about Mozilla’s report is how unexceptional most of its conclusions are. (Microsoft’s Edge, for example, runs on Google’s Blink). Just those three browser engines (Blink, Webkit, and Mozilla’s Gecko) are the only ones left in play - powering all browsers available to consumers. It also remains the underdog in market share terms - with the market being dominated by Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari (especially on mobile) and by the technical infrastructure the pair develop via their respective Blink and Webkit browser engines. But it’s a nonprofit, free software developer, rather than a commercial player. Mozilla is not a bystander in the browser arena, as it of course developers the Firefox browser and the Gecko engine that underpins it. As antitrust regulators around the world dial up scrutiny of platform power, Mozilla has published a piece of research digging into the at times subtle yet always insidious ways operating systems exert influence to keep consumers locked to using their own-brand browsers rather than seeking out and switching to independent options - while simultaneously warning that competition in the browser market is vital to ensure innovation and choice for consumers and, more broadly, protect the vitality of the open web against the commercial giants trying to wall it up.
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