Written by Supantha Mukherjee and Fu Yun Qi
STOCKHOLM/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union law makes it easier for Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft and Apple to switch to competitors in the first month, according to data provided to the European Union. It has become clear that the number of users is rapidly increasing. Reuters news by 6 companies.
Early results show that the EU's comprehensive digital markets law, aimed at eliminating unfair competition, will come into force on March 7, with big tech companies offering mobile users a “choice screen” from the list of available web browsers. This was announced in response to the mandate to provide a function that allows users to choose from. ”
Browsers are the software that helps users connect to the Internet, and are traditionally offered for free by big technology companies like Apple and Google in exchange for tracking the websites consumers visit and selling advertising to consumers. has been provided.
Mobile devices running Android come with the Chrome browser by default, and iPhones come with Safari, which is the dominant browser on the market.
Cyprus-based Aloha Browser has announced a 250% jump in users in the EU in March, making it one of the first companies to announce a monthly increase since new regulations were introduced. became.
Founded in 2016, Aloha pitches itself as a privacy-focused alternative to browsers owned by big tech companies, has an average of 10 million monthly users, and does not track users or sell ads. rather, it makes money through paid subscriptions.
“The EU used to be our fourth-largest market, and now it's our second-largest market,” Aloha CEO Andrew Frost-Moroz said in an interview.
Norway's Vivaldi, Germany's Ecosia and US-based Brave also saw their user numbers increase following the new regulations.
U.S.-based DuckDuckGo, which has about 100 million users, and its big rival, Norway-based Opera, also said their user numbers are growing but that they have not yet completed rolling out selection screens. .
“We are currently experiencing record user numbers in the EU,” said Jan Stendhal, vice president of Opera, which has more than 324 million users worldwide.
the chosen ones
New EU rules require mobile software makers to display a selection screen where users can choose a browser, search engine or virtual assistant when setting up their phone.
In the past, technology companies like Apple and Google included default settings on their phones that included their preferred services, such as the iPhone's voice assistant Siri. Changing these settings required a more complex process.
Apple currently displays up to 11 browsers in addition to Safari in a curated selection screen for each of the EU's 27 countries, which will be updated once a year in each country.
DuckDuckGo and Opera are available in all 27 countries on Apple's list, while Aloha is available in 26 countries, Ecosia in 13 countries, and Vivaldi in 8 countries.
Google currently shows browser choices on its devices, but said new devices from other companies running the Android operating system will also have the selection screen in the coming months.
A Google spokesperson said the company doesn't yet have data to share about the selection screen.
Because the iPhone has a larger market share than Google-branded phones, the growth of smaller browsers is currently coming at the expense of Safari.
Opera says most of the positive trends are due to people making Opera the default browser on their iPhones.
But browser companies have criticized the way Apple and Google roll out new features, calling them slow and clunky and believing they are slowing mobile users' transition to new browser choices.
Mozilla, which owns the Firefox browser, estimates that only 19% of iPhone users in the region received the update, which was rolled out much slower than previous software updates, the company said.
Jon Stevenson von Tetschner, CEO of Norway's Vivaldi, said that on iPhones, users only see a selection screen when they click on Safari, and then they see a list of browsers with no additional information. It is said that it will be done.
“The process is so complex that it's easiest for[users]to choose Safari or some other known name,” he said.
This complex design led the European Commission to launch an investigation into whether Apple was preventing users from actually choosing services.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm and Yun Chee in Brussels; Editing by Kenneth Li and Daniel Wallis)
