Mozilla urges UK watchdog to mandate browser choice screens alongside search

Mozilla is telling the UK Competition and Markets Authority that its plan to fix Google’s search dominance is missing a big piece of the puzzle.

Last month, the UK watchdog shared updated plans to force Google to show a search engine choice screen on Android phones and inside Chrome. In a new blog post, the Firefox maker welcomed the move, even noting how the rules now let AI assistants show up as search options too.

Still, asking people to pick a search engine inside a browser they never actually chose only fixes half the problem. Most of the 56 million smartphone owners in the UK just stick with whatever browser comes pre-installed on their phone, which almost always means Chrome or Safari.

“Nobody chooses the furniture before the house,” Mozilla’s Gemma Petrie wrote when explaining why a browser choice screen needs to show up before the search prompt. When people get a new phone, they often mix up browsers and search engines anyway, so testing and rolling out both screens together makes the whole setup way less confusing.

That said, this is hardly the only regulatory battle the company has going on right now. Just a couple of weeks ago, we covered how Mozilla escalated its fight against Microsoft’s relentless Edge pop-ups by going straight to antitrust regulators in the UK and the US.

The company knows choice screens can make tech giants play fair. After the EU enforced similar Digital Markets Act rules, people chose Firefox once every ten seconds, and stayed five times longer than typical downloads.

That kind of organic user growth is critical right now, especially since Mozilla recently warned that tough US antitrust laws against Google could threaten independent browsers by cutting off vital search deal revenue.

Browsers are also starting to compete heavily on built-in AI tools, where Firefox already lets desktop users pick which AI model sits in their sidebar. Because of how much control the browser has over your daily web habits, Mozilla wants the UK to require Apple and Google to show browser choice screens on iOS and Android right alongside the upcoming search menus.

It is part of the company’s push to break the mobile and desktop duopoly. And it comes just days after Mozilla launched Firefox Enterprise to challenge Chrome and Edge’s grip on corporate IT.

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