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Mozilla has expressed criticism about Apple's new rules for browsers in the EU

Apple has made changes to the rules for the operation of third-party browsers on iOS in the European Union to comply with local legal requirements. However, these changes have attracted criticism from Mozilla.

In iOS 17.4, Apple no longer requires browsers to use WebKit, the basic Safari engine. This opens up possibilities for other popular engines such as Blink, used in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, as well as Gecko for Firefox. Now third-party browsers can interact with all the functionality, not limited to WebKit.

However, Mozilla's representative, Damiano DeMonte, expressed disappointment with Apple's actions.

"We are still reviewing the technical details, but are extremely disappointed with Apple's proposed plan to limit BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific applications," he said.

DeMonte also stressed that this would force Firefox to support two separate implementations, which would be an additional burden for Mozilla developers.

"Apple's offerings do not provide consumers with a real choice, making it as difficult as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari," DeMonte added.

Earlier, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney compared Apple's new terms to a "horror show," and Spotify rated the changes as a "farce." The company's decision is still awaiting approval by the EU Commission.

It was also previously reported that Apple is preparing to split the App Store into two parts so that users from Europe have their own app store with their own rules. Recently, the company's blog published a detailed description of the new features available to users from Europe in iOS 17.4.

The company will open third-party stores and provide APIs for their creation, add support for third-party browser engines, as well as introduce the ability to pay for in-app purchases via external links and use an NFC chip for contactless payment outside the Apple Pay system.

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