Antitrust regulators are turning their attention to mobile web browsers.
Last week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced an update to its investigation into anticompetitive practices in the mobile web browser market. (The investigation also covers the cloud gaming market as a bit of a tacked-on add-in.)
In previous updates, between March and July, the CMA identified mechanisms it says Apple and Google use to limit competition from third-party mobile web browsers, such as requiring that all browsers operating on iOS devices use Apple’s proprietary WebKit browser engine.
This most recent update includes a raft of proposed remedies to these alleged anticompetitive practices.
But there’s more that needs to be addressed, according to a group of 20 web app developers and browser extension makers who sent a letter to the CMA on July 29 voicing their concerns.
Although they agree with many of the CMA’s findings, they claim that the proposed remedies – which mostly focus on giving users more choice over their mobile browser preferences – do not break down barriers to entry for mobile web extensions on iOS and Android.
The CMA is accepting feedback on its suggested remedies until November.
Developing competition
The letter’s signatories include ad blocking browser extension developers eyeo, Ghostery and Gener8, who spoke to AdExchanger.
They argue that mobile browser extensions are in a dicey position compared to browser extensions on desktop, where consumers can more easily customize their user experience. And they believe customization has promoted competition among desktop browsers.
For example, Chrome and Firefox were able to fight for market share against Microsoft’s once-dominant Internet Explorer by introducing compatibility with third-party browser extensions, said Ghostery CEO Jean-Paul Schmetz. This move kicked off a decade of innovation, as browsers competed to give users more customization options, he added.
That same dynamic, the letter asserts, has not been replicated on mobile platforms, where Apple and Google act as gatekeepers to the market through their mobile app stores on iOS and Android, respectively.
Apple’s Safari browser is the default on iOS. And Apple requires all web browsers featured in its App Store to use the Safari WebKit – which means any non-Safari browser on iOS is functionally Safari, just with a different label slapped on, said Christos Bacharakis, technology relations lead at eyeo, developer of Adblock Plus.
Chrome is more of a de facto default. While the CMA found that most Android devices come with Chrome preinstalled, it also found that 80% of Android users could change their default web browser if they chose to do so.
But how inclined is the average consumer to change defaults, really?
“There are powerful consumer behavior effects around defaults on mobile that are perhaps a bit stronger than they are on desktop,” said Tom Fish, head of public policy and research at Gener8 and a former assistant director for the CMA, where he helped launch the market investigation into mobile web browsers.
“Apple and Google have leaned into those [behaviors] to strongly preference their own browsers,” he added.
Limiting extensions
From these positions of strength, Apple and Google have also placed limitations on how browser extensions can be applied on mobile, the letter continues.
For example, unlike the desktop version, Chrome for Android does not support browser extensions.
Google denied that Chrome for Android’s lack of support for extensions is an attempt to stifle the market. A company spokesperson pointed out that Android does not restrict third-party browsers from supporting extensions, citing Firefox and Microsoft Edge as examples.
Safari for iOS also supports extensions – in theory. In practice, however, rather than installing extensions directly within Safari, as they can do on desktop, iOS users must instead download an extension from the App Store as a standalone app, said Krzysztof Modras, director of engineering and product at Ghostery. Users then have to manually enable the extension in Safari’s settings and within the Safari app itself, providing consent at each step along the way.
Most users would simply download the standalone app and assume the extension had also been installed on their Safari browser, when that’s not actually the case, Schmetz said.
One way to get around these limitations would be for browser extension companies to develop their own mobile browsers that include the functionality their extensions are known for, said Bacharakis. Eyeo, for example, developed the Adblock Browser for iOS and Android, which required “a tremendous amount of investment,” he said.
Imposing an onerous, multistep installation process on end users or forcing developers to roll out specialized products at high costs are unfair impediments to competition, the letter argues.
And now the letter’s signatories are looking to the CMA to consider these issues as the regulator mulls potential fixes to promote a fairer mobile ecosystem.
Last resort
The ad blocking companies AdExchanger spoke with have an even more specific gripe, though.
They believe Apple and Google have made it harder for users to install their mobile web browser extensions as a means of protecting their own advertising interests.
Of course, bringing ad blockers to the mobile web could have detrimental effects for many ad-supported businesses, not just Apple and Google.
But there are also hundreds of thousands of browser extensions, including several signatories on the CMA letter, that offer functionality that has less of an impact on Apple’s and Google’s bottom lines, such as language translation or user interface adjustments, Fish said. LanguageTool is one such company.
In these cases, Apple and Google might be incentivized to restrict these apps to limit who has access to user behavioral data on their mobile platforms, thereby strengthening their walled gardens, he said.
It’s also important to consider that developing browser extensions is a low-cost point of entry to developing fully fledged web browsers, Fish added. So, by making it harder for upstarts to gain entry into the market, Apple and Google are protecting their stranglehold on mobile web browsers as well, he said.
Apple and Google have had plenty of time to figure out how to promote a more competitive environment on iOS and Android, argue the app developers who signed the letter to the CMA. And their dominance over mobile environments requires a regulatory body like the CMA, which has
Case in point: Google added support for extensions to the desktop version of Chrome going back to 2009 and launched the Chrome Web Store as a repository of supported extensions the following year. So the idea that Google hasn’t found a way to support browser extensions on mobile in the 15 years since then is hard to believe, Schmetz said.
The desktop web has “had 15 years of extensions, which was probably the most creative [era] of the open web,” Schmetz said. “We all hope that there will be another phase of openness where people can innovate.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
