Digital Markets Act: Do you really want to surf with this browser?

Christian Kroll wants to make the Internet environmentally friendly. To this end, the Berliner founded a search engine called Ecosia in 2009. He uses the money he earns to plant trees; there are now more than 200 million trees. But even though millions of people use its search engine, it is tiny compared to Google. According to the company, the project should now have a market share of between one and two percent, although external statisticians believe the number is significantly lower. Soon, Kroll hopes, the value could finally rise.

From this Thursday, the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, or DMA for short, will come into force. So-called gatekeepers, i.e. companies that dominate the market, should no longer be allowed to crush smaller competitors like Ecosia with their market power. After long consultations, the EU Commission has declared the companies Google, Amazon, Apple , Meta, Microsoft and TikTok parent ByteDance to be such gatekeepers.

The browser selection on the iPhone. The order should be random.

“We are changing the rules of the game,” said EU Commissioner for Digital Margrethe Vestager when the law was passed. “So that even in the digital world, what matters is who has the best ideas or tries the hardest, and not who is the greatest.” Specifically, this means: Google, the manufacturer of the most popular browser Chrome, should no longer be allowed to simply preset that Google is the default search engine.

That’s why, starting this week, all users of Chrome, but also of Apple’s Safari on the iPhone , will see a pop-up on the screen that offers them a list of several options. You can choose from various browsers such as Microsoft Edge or Firefox and various search engines such as the data protection-oriented DuckDuckGo or the ecological Ecosia.

The first time everyone is asked

Users have been able to select other search engines as default before, but they had to navigate to the settings specifically to do so. What’s new is that the selection is displayed to everyone. The selection dialogue only appears in the area of the European Union and initially only until the choice has been made. The order in which the options are presented is intended to be random.

For Ecosia maker Kroll, this is an opportunity for more attention. Of course, the big ones are still on the list and many people will probably click on the familiar options. Still, millions of people who may have never heard of its eco-search engine are now at least being made aware that they could switch. “This is the first time that you as a user have ever been asked,” says Kroll. “Otherwise everything is always preset.”

Kroll hired influencers to promote its search engine on social networks. He hopes to get more market share for Ecosia. But that’s not certain. The selection is shown to every Chrome user, including those who have previously selected Ecosia or other Google competitors. This means: In the worst case scenario, users will then switch back from Ecosia to the market leader. You have to look very closely at how companies implement the DMA guidelines, says Kroll.

A second important element of the DMA is browser freedom on the iPhone. Safari users also see a selection dialog about which app they want to use to access the Internet in the future. The pop-up appears as soon as you install iOS 17.4, which was released on Tuesday, and open Safari. In addition to Firefox, Microsoft Edge and the Onion Browser, Ecosia is also included because Kroll has also put its search engine in its own browser.

However, for larger browser developers like Firefox, the DMA will change something that is initially barely visible to users. Until now, all browsers on the iPhone were dependent on using Apple’s so-called WebKit engine as the core of their software. Regardless of whether it is Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, Apple technology always continues to work underneath iOS. In the future, browser manufacturers will be allowed to use their own engines, such as Quantum in Firefox or Blink in Chrome.

Christian Kroll wants to make the Internet environmentally friendly. To this end, the Berliner founded a search engine called Ecosia in 2009. He uses the money he earns to plant trees; there are now more than 200 million trees. But even though millions of people use its search engine, it is tiny compared to Google. According to the company, the project should now have a market share of between one and two percent, although external statisticians believe the number is significantly lower. Soon, Kroll hopes, the value could finally rise.

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