The Google Web

Open Web Advocacy posted Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December, commenting that it “is a major step forward for browser competition”.

I disagree. It’s a step backward.

First, the article conflates browser and rendering engine. Yes, they are in most cases interlinked, and might be difficult or impossible to separate. But they are not the same. A small company can build a browser around WebKit to compete on iOS. Introducing a new rendering engine nowadays is only realistic for a few existing tech giants.

Second, the web is based on standards. Rendering engines must follow rules set by the World Wide Web Consortium. If a web app requires a specific rendering engine to run, it’s not a web app. It’s a Google platform app. So much for “open”. The word for a healthy open web should be “collaboration”, not “competition”.

Third, even though Apple cultivating an anti-competitive attitude by defying international rulings is obnoxious, in this case their protectionism is working for the preservation of an open web. When Chromium-based rendering engines will be allowed on iOS, the scenario already playing on macOS will repeat itself: everybody will install Chrome to run Google-locked apps. Developers will then have zero incentives to maintain WebKit compatibility, since “just install Chrome on your iPhone / iPad” will be the easy answer to save them work. Nothing runs on WebKit anymore, WebKit withers to irrelevance, Google is even more free to impose any changes they want, the open web is now the Google web.

So yes, in theory everyone is playing fair, and iOS becomes a merry hub for web innovation. In practice, the last counter-weight to Google’s gorilla-sized web hegemony falls, and the open web gets buried under it.