TL;DR: Alex Moore (Executive Director of OWA) and John Ozbay (CEO and Founder of Cyptee) were recently interviewed by Simonetta Vezzoso, a European academic specializing in digital competition law and the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Some readers may remember John previously representing OWA at the EU’s DMA workshops.

If you have the opportunity we recommend listening to the full interview:

How John Got Involved in Digital Policy

John was asked how he got involved with OWA:

John, you are a software engineer. How did you end up doing digital policy in the general interest on top of your day job?

I'm a software engineer and I'm the founder and CEO of a company called* Cyptee*. About two years ago, Apple wanted to try to kill web apps and they used European Commission's DMA as an excuse. I reached out to a bunch of amazing folks at Open Web Advocacy and I got involved in and I've been doing this ever since. My platform is intentionally not on the app stores because I never wanted to give Apple or Google 30% of the commission. We intentionally decided that we're going to ship only web apps. John Ozbay - CEO and Founder of Cyptee

This refers to the period when Apple appeared poised to break key web app functionality in Europe, a move that would likely have had global consequences. Following significant pushback, Apple ultimately reversed course.

How the Open Web Aligns with the DMA

Alex was asked how the open web supports the goals of the DMA and similar regulatory efforts:

How does the open web support the goals of the DMA and similar digital regulation regimes around the world in your opinion?

That's a good question and I think it really comes down to when you talk about the open web, it is really the only existing scalable interoperable cross-platform competitive constraint on the mobile operating systems and app store gatekeepers. Because if you talk about the DMA's core aims: contestability, fairness, interoperability, user choice, all of those line up perfectly with what a healthy web delivers.

Now, the other thing that the web delivers is much lower switching costs. And that's because you get lower development costs because you write once, deploy everywhere. You have a reduced dependency on app stores. You don't have to pay gatekeeper fees. The apps work automatically on third party devices. And really, so if you're talking about a clear route to challenging the Apple and Google duopoly, then having a middleware layer that works across those operating systems is our best bet.

And then if you talk about what the downstream consumer benefits of this is going to be lower prices, better innovation, higher quality software and again less lock in and a better chance for a new operating system or device ecosystems to emerge. Alex Moore - Executive Director of OWA

Why the Web Lowers Barriers to Entry

John also had an excellent description of why the web remains uniquely accessible for smaller businesses:

What's amazing about the web is that it doesn't require you to have a multi-million dollar company to take part in to create a website. You can do it for a few bucks yourself or it doesn't require you to have any specific technical knowledge when you can use stuff like Squarespace to create websites for yourself. So that's the cool thing about the web is that it's open versus if you think about app stores, they're not exactly open.

They're the opposite of open where you have to pay Apple some fees and it's only specific for a specific platform and all these things are restrictions around what you can and can't do on iOS and which features you're allowed to ship and which features you're not allowed to ship. You have to sign some special agreements with Apple or Google and whatnot. So, we believe that the web is cool because it's very very open and it stands for all this openness that comes from not being attached to any specific gatekeeping business party. John Ozbay - CEO and Founder of Cyptee

Why There Hasn’t Been an Anti-Circumvention Case

Alex was also asked why the European Commission has not yet brought an anti-circumvention case against Apple:

If Apple formally allows alternative web browser engines, but other contractual or technical barriers mean that none have been shipped so far, why hasn't this become a test case for anti-circumvention? In your opinion, what's stopping it?

I suppose it's good to think about the digital market in terms of practicalities. [...] Apple has a legal budget of a billion dollars per year now when you're going up against a party that has a legal budget that dwarfs your own budget. It means you need to be quite careful when you're enforcing the regulation. Making sure you follow every single step and that when you take it to court, you are going to win that battle because every battle lost in court means that it's going to weaken the digital regulation to everyone else. And so what I think that means in terms of the digital market, there's a certain capacity about how many cases they can take on and process per year. And I think one of the biggest areas that the EU could look at improving is to expand the bandwidth of what the DMA could actually handle at one time. And then maybe we could get through more of these cases concurrently.

And you have to realize Apple makes an enormous amount of money from Safari. I think the last count was something like $22 billion dollars per year because they set Google searches the default and they get a revenue share agreement with Google and so even if they lose 1% of market share globally that's worth $200 million a year for them. So they will fight tooth and nail to protect browser share including putting up all these stupid rules to prevent other competitors from getting into the market and actually being able to compete.

Now in terms of browser engines we have made some progress over the last couple of years in that there's been a whole list of just ridiculous conditions that we've managed to overturn and those issues have been fixed. But the big one that is still a major sticking point is Apple has basically said that if you want to ship your browser to EU, you have to ship a brand new browser, right? And so you got to think about that from the browser company's point of view. Let's say you've got 20 million or say you got 10 million users in the EU and they're in your Apple WebKit based browser. Now what Apple's saying is they want you to bring out another browser and cannibalize your own market by migrating the users. Now the thing is we've already come up with easily workable solutions that are even jurisdictionally constrained with the EU. They can even allow both engines to live within a single app, you know, have two engines inside one app and then you just have a toggle. If we're inside the EU, we use their real browser engine. If we're outside the EU, we use the WebKit one. That's just a contractual change. So to fix that one, all they need to do is go into one contract, change one line, and that problem's done. No technical changes needed whatsoever. Alex Moore - Executive Director of OWA

We outline our proposals on how Apple can allow browser vendors to update their existing EU users here.

The European Commission Should Investigate

The gatekeeper shall not require end users to use, or business users to use, to offer, or to interoperate with, an identification service, a web browser engine or a payment service, or technical services that support the provision of payment services, such as payment systems for in-app purchases, of that gatekeeper in the context of services provided by the business users using that gatekeeper’s core platform services. Digital Markets Act - Article 5(7)
(emphasis added)

More than two years have passed since March 7, 2024, when Apple became legally obligated under the DMA to allow third-party browser engines, yet not a single browser vendor has successfully ported their own engine to iOS in the EU. Over 24 months later, the practical outcome remains unchanged, strongly suggesting that Apple’s contractual barriers are preventing browser vendors from shipping. These are the very issues we outlined in 2024 as likely to prevent browser vendors from being able to port their engines, and urged the Commission to fix.

Last year we argued in extensive detail why we believe Apple is obligated to fix this under the DMA.

At this point, it is clear that compliance is not being meaningfully achieved. The European Commission should open a formal investigation into Apple’s compliance with Article 5(7). Without decisive action by the European Commission, Apple appears set to hold back browser, browser engine, and web app competition on iOS indefinitely, undermining the objective laid out in Recital 43.

When gatekeepers operate and impose web browser engines, they are in a position to determine the functionality and standards that will apply not only to their own web browsers, but also to competing web browsers and, in turn, to web software applications. Gatekeepers should therefore not use their position to require their dependent business users to use any of the services provided together with, or in support of, core platform services by the gatekeeper itself as part of the provision of services or products by those business users. Digital Markets Act - Recital 43
(emphasis added)