A web browser is the application through which employees and citizens reach nearly every digital service. This category covers desktop and mobile browsers and the features around them: extensions, bookmark and password sync, built-in search and tracking protection. Organisations choose browsers for compatibility, central management and security updates, individuals for privacy and convenience.
The sovereignty issues are the default search provider and other pre-configured services, the telemetry sent by default, and the sync service that stores history, passwords and passkeys in a vendor account. Passkeys based on WebAuthn are scoped to the sites they belong to, but where they are synchronised depends on the browser and platform. A further dependency sits below the product: most browsers build on a small number of rendering engines, so a European brand may still rely on engine work done elsewhere. The Digital Markets Act also prohibits gatekeepers from stopping users from removing pre-installed software.
When choosing a European option, check which engine it uses and how quickly security fixes arrive, whether telemetry and search defaults can be changed or disabled centrally, whether sync is end-to-end encrypted and can be self-hosted, and whether enterprise policy and extension management are supported.