At Mozilla, we’ve long believed in giving people choice and agency over their experiences online. As power in digital markets has concentrated in a small number of large companies, there have been efforts in the , , and elsewhere to restore competition and put choice back in people’s hands.
These efforts are at various stages, but first among them was the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Over two years since obligations came into effect, the DMA is . Comparing the 15 months before and after browser choice screens rolled out on iOS, they found that Firefox daily active users (DAU) were 113% higher in the EU than it would have been without the DMA. On Android, it was 12% higher. The smaller Android effect is due to the fact that Firefox usage there started from a much higher base, and the Android rollout has been more uneven than on iOS. The research also shows that the DMA’s effect is growing over time.
Browser choice on mobile is moving, but desktop is left behind
The DMA’s work isn’t done. There remains room for improvement on mobile (including making it easier to import your data to a new browser and switch with one click). However, desktop remains largely untouched – leaving roughly 310 million desktops and laptops in the EU without equivalent browser choice. For example, Windows users are ; ecosystem lock-in and interoperability barriers still hold back competition and innovation.
Still, the signal is clear: when people get real browser choice, they take it and select alternatives. It’s easy for gatekeepers to dismiss this as a couple of competitors benefiting. This ignores in manually changing browser defaults. The DMA’s effects are only starting to be felt and understood.
The road ahead
Effective enforcement of the obligations is the way forward. Gatekeepers continue to test and, in many instances, openly push back against the intent of the DMA provisions. This can take the form of implementation choices that limit real user uptake, delays in rolling out effective solutions, or sustained efforts to reinterpret, weaken, or roll back key provisions.
Most evidently, privacy and security arguments are often elevated in ways that risk diverting attention from whether compliance is delivering genuine choice and competition in practice. In reality, privacy, security, and effective competition can and should be designed to work hand-in-hand. They do not always have to be traded off.
Policymakers and enforcers should remain focused on outcomes: ensuring that the DMA delivers real-world competition and user choice, and resisting efforts to dilute its impact through partial compliance or narrative reframing.
Browser choice is just the start
Mozilla’s hope is that real browser choice will become the rule, rather than the exception. And that the lessons of browser choice screens will be applied to other areas of the DMA, including data portability and interoperability. Only with full compliance – including applying the existing DMA text to AI – can the full benefits of competition and innovation be brought to people in the EU.
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