Apple considering dropping requirement for iPhone web browsers to use WebKit

Re:Apple considering dropping requirement for iPhone web bro... by acdha on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @03:00PM (#33989400)

How'd that work for Microsoft Edge? Firefox usage tanked when Google started heavily promoting Chrome on search, Gmail, Youtube, Docs, etc. and I would be shocked if this went through and every Google app didn't start telling people that they should install Chrome or certain features were being held back for Chrome users.

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Re:Apple considering dropping requirement for iPhone web bro... by cal85 on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @03:25PM (#33989929)

I'm confused, how does this move affect Google's ability to promote their own iOS Chrome app to Safari iOS users? They already have that ability.

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Re:Apple considering dropping requirement for iPhone web bro... by acdha on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @03:28PM (#33989991)

Chrome on iOS uses the same WebKit engine as Safari. Right now, if someone at Google wants to ship a web API they need to work with Apple and, to a lesser extent, Mozilla to implement it. If they could tell people to use Blink on iOS, they'd have the ability to ship the update and blow off attempts to change the code in the standardization process or even standardize at all because 95% of their users would be running code which they can arbitrarily update.

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Re:Apple considering dropping requirement for iPhone web bro... by someNameIG on Wednesday December 14, 2022 @03:07PM (#33989559)

Iirc on macOS Safari is still the most popular, with over 50% using it. It's no where near as dominant as Safari is on iOS but significantly more than Edge is on Windows.

I like Safari too, so even with this change I'll keep using it on my Apple devices.

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