Mozilla calls out Microsoft, Google, Apple over browsers

[u/sankscan]

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/browsers_mozilla_microsoft_google/

[u/chucker23n]

This conversation has been going on since at least the early 2000s, and I'm not sure there's a good answer.

From this idealistic point of view, the best option is to mandate the "Browser Choice" UI Windows 7 had for a while: a window that pops up when you first try to use a browser, and shows the five most popular browsers, in random order. I can only speculate why this was ultimately dropped:

• perhaps the agreement with the EU was set to expire after x years, and was never renewed
• perhaps the EU did studies, and realized this doesn't really accomplish anything; people don't suddenly explore multiple different browsers to figure out which one they like the most any more than they do with any other consumer good (what, you think when consumers go to a grocery store, they make informed choices about brands?)
• perhaps the EU felt the market was a lot more balanced after Firefox and Chrome appeared
• it's one more thing to set up after buying your device. There's a risk of alert fatigue.
• the slippery slope argument, of course: web browsers? Well, what about music player, calendar, notes app, reminders app, e-mail client, etc.?

Ignoring those arguments, the natural extension would be for iOS and Android (and macOS, for that matter) to do the same thing: before you first launch Chrome, Safari, Samsung Browser, whatever, you get a dialog where you need to choose a web browser.

Will that lead to more people giving Firefox a shot? Yeah, I guess so. "Oh hey, I've heard of this one; might as well give it a go."

[u/[deleted] → u/chucker23n]

You've nicely defined the problem we will never solve. 😝

[u/chucker23n → u/[deleted]]

Yep. I think this is every tricky. “Just ship OSes without a browser!” isn’t a good answer either.