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Brave Browser Reports Spike in EU Installs After iOS 17.4 DMA Changes
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Consumers already had a choice. Alternative browsers in the App Store, different default browser, and of course Android.
Its not really a choice when all browsers in the app store are effectively reskins of safari now is it.
Yes, and my question is how much control do you think companies like Apple (with iOS) and Microsoft (with Windows) should have regarding browser availability, placement, etc. How much say, if any, should the government have here?
Yes but that was 12 to 17 years ago. I think Safari deserves another chance on non-Apple platforms but Apple doesn't seem interested in doing so at this point.
Brave is my browser of choice on all of my computers and devices.
YouTube has ads?!🙃🙃🤭 Brave is awesome.🥳
I'm betting they are already working on it. It's not a big enough problem to throw money at thus far.
Good to see that there is now an option to choose the default browser. Would like to see this in other countries too.
So you think we wouldn't have noticed a 33% jump if it hadn't been turned into a 250% jump?
Thats what they are saying. But the jump isn't because users have a choice (they've had exactly the same choice since iOS 14). The jump is because third party browsers are getting advertising via a browser picker screen when EU users upgrade to 17.4.
Let's say three total EU users had Brave installed. If ONE person in all of the EU selected it from the list, they would have had a 30% increase in installs.
Obviously they have more than three users. But their established user base on iOS is not so large that an interstitial put in front of EVERY EU user on upgrade wouldn't lead to a substantial spike. Unfortunately we don't know based on the graph given what their user base was before the change; it may have been small enough compared to iPhone usage across the EU that they are still only getting single digit percentage selection from users on that screen.
What?
Your math seems to be broken. Of course they can easily see 30% increase in installs just because of this browser choice screen. Just like alternate browsers did back in 2010 when Microsoft had to implement this.
Microsoft Gives Rival Browsers a Lift (Published 2010)
As Microsoft complies with new European rules to offer a choice of browsers to Windows users, smaller browsers are getting a boost.
While I applaud EU effort the graph is somewhat misleading - the jump is about 30-40% and the numbers, compared to safari, are stilly microscopic :-(
but giving users more choice and informing them about it (instead of proactively hinder it, like Google does with Chrome or MS did with Internet Explorer na now does with Edge) is still great!
but giving users more choice and informing them about it (instead of proactively hinder it, like Google does with Chrome or MS did with Internet Explorer na now does with Edge) is still great!
wow, good luck using fricking ruzzki mir search service!
dude, you could have used other browsers long ago.
I'm happy with Safari as default. At least I know I'm not giving more data to google than I need to. Its been stable and reliable browser for many many years. For any shady sites, and darker places, I use Firefox with lots of extensions, and brave is only for youtube to kill all those ads.
Is Safari presented in the list in the same fashion as the other browsers? If so, I would think that many nontechnical users wouldn’t even know to select it to retain the experience they’re used to, in which case they probably choose randomly (and will soon after be trying to figure out how to get back to what they know). And can the user choose not to choose? From the screenshot, it looks like they have to choose something whether they know what they’re doing or not.
Keep in mind, too, that there are still plenty of people who have no idea what a browser is — they just use the internet or similar. For these people, the whole premise of the screen makes no sense.
It seems to me like this is going to confuse consumers more than it’s going to help them. And the thing is, as others have already pointed out, the problem of letting the consumer change the default browser has already been addressed, so those who understand browsers enough to want the option already had it.
The real issue has been that Apple didn’t allow third-party browsers to use a rendering engine other than WebKit. Allowing that is (arguably) the big win from DMA. However, that’s best addressed simply by allowing third-party browsers to use the engine of their choice — not forcing every consumer to make a technical decision that many are not prepared to make. The screen is really a bit of anti-consumer bragging by the EU to show power over Apple. More consumer-friendly would have been to get the engine win and move on.
So yes, this will absolutely boost third party browsers. But the way it does so means that many of the new users are not going to be happy, informed users. I suspect Apple tech-support lines are getting jammed with people trying to figure out why the Internet looks different now.
Keep in mind, too, that there are still plenty of people who have no idea what a browser is — they just use the internet or similar. For these people, the whole premise of the screen makes no sense.
It seems to me like this is going to confuse consumers more than it’s going to help them. And the thing is, as others have already pointed out, the problem of letting the consumer change the default browser has already been addressed, so those who understand browsers enough to want the option already had it.
The real issue has been that Apple didn’t allow third-party browsers to use a rendering engine other than WebKit. Allowing that is (arguably) the big win from DMA. However, that’s best addressed simply by allowing third-party browsers to use the engine of their choice — not forcing every consumer to make a technical decision that many are not prepared to make. The screen is really a bit of anti-consumer bragging by the EU to show power over Apple. More consumer-friendly would have been to get the engine win and move on.
So yes, this will absolutely boost third party browsers. But the way it does so means that many of the new users are not going to be happy, informed users. I suspect Apple tech-support lines are getting jammed with people trying to figure out why the Internet looks different now.
Yes.
That's kind of the point; the EU doesn't want any of them to stand out.
Agreed.
I dunno about that.
If we go from a premise of "many people don't even know let alone care what a web browser is", which I agree with, we must also allow for "even fewer people give a damn what the hell a browser engine is". That's just a bizarre implementation detail almost nobody should have to are about. (Ideally, not even web developers, since they should target the standards.)
We don't disagree here: it's going to be a tiny number of people who care. Most don't think about the browser much at all, and of those that do, the vast majority of them are simply going to want to use a particular browser, not a particular browser engine. Web developers being an unfortunate exception because standards still aren't perfect.
But that goes back to my point that all the EU has done here is foist a decision upon users, most of whom aren't prepared to make the decision. Yes, having millions of people make a random browser choice will certainly spread the love amongst the browsers, but it'll do so at the expense of dramatically higher levels of user confusion. And I still think it'll be temporary once users figure out how to get back to familiar ground; very soon, we'll probably start seeing "how to" bits telling users how to get back to what they're used to.
I elect engine choice as the real issue because that's the only issue that was remaining. Apple already allowed third-party browsers, and they already allowed users to select one of those third-party browsers as the default. Those two features address the vast majority of people's needs, with engine being the only choice that was still MIA -- for that 0.001% of people who care about it. Heck, I think Apple even allows third-party browsers to make themselves the default (after an appropriate user interaction). Had DMA simply required third-party browsers be allowed to use the engine of their choice, the situation would be very close to the browser situation we have on the desktop.
Enabling competition is a good thing, but blowing up a key user experience for ~92% of users without direct gain just to force temporary adoption of alternatives? I can't see how that helps consumers, and the user churn it'll create for other browsers isn't going to be terribly helpful to them, either.
Please explain why the Y-axis needs to start at zero. It's a trend chart. Trends occur, and are analyzed, over an examination period to assess behavior and/or performance. By this logic, it would be impossible to analyze, or trend, the performance of a stock or financial instrument unless it had an initial valuation of $0.00 (when has a stock's initial valuation ever been set to zero). Trends are relative. Backtracking the chart to the initial release of the browser (no installs), your zero, would offer what value? It would have no effect on the behavior observed in this article, but would in fact befuddle the chart with useless information outside the examination period. It's the precise reason why finance analysis tools operate on rolling windows of time (YTD, 1-YR, 2-YR, 6-months, etc.); depending on the analysis, you do not require a lifetime "look back". And depending on the data, you may never have a zero Y-axis; this is not a mathematical requirement.
Citation needed. In regards to the supposed backdoor, the devs publicly addressed that.