Firefox does not predate Google. Firefox is a descendant of Mozilla, which started as a broken chunk of quickly open sourced Netscape Navigator 4.0 code. Netscape's engineers ripped out everything they didn't hold a license to and dumped it raw (and uncompilable) on the web for the OSS community to rebuild. This happed just before Netscape was finished being acquired by AOL.

AOL did rebrand Netscape Navigator as AOL Browser, but it didn't gain any significant market share.

Google was founded about the same time (about two years later) as Netscape Navigator was released. So, you can either say Firefox's history is older than Google or the actual Firefox project is younger than Google.

[–] beatle@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization

Google Founded September 4, 1998

Mozilla, Gecko and what everyone now commonly refers to as Firefox predates Google.

Edit: you’re technically correct of course, however I wasn’t about to complicate my reply with Netscape, Mozilla and Gecko history when the OP I was replying to was saying Firefox was built on Google Chromium.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're all technically correct so far. Since that's the best kind of correct I say we high five and enjoy reveling in our knowledge of nerddom history.

[–] beatle@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago

The best kind indeed. You’re a good human.