I think he means Firefox is not Chromium-based; Chrome is a proprietary code base, no one can access it besides internal Google employees. Chromium, on the other hand, is open source, and is what browsers such as Edge, Brave and Opera are based off of. Chrome is also based off Chromium, it’s the closed source browser Google distributes. Think of Chromium as Android, and the Pixel UI as Chrome. So no, I doubt he means Firefox is Chrome.

Edit: seeing from the other comments, downvotes, and that the comment has been edited, he most likely made a typo and typed “Firefox is chromium.”

Edit 2: Mistakenly said that Chromium was what Firefox was based off of when I meant to say Brave. My bad. I’m well aware Firefox isn’t Chromium-based(I use it for that reason), I was just confused as to why this person was saying he meant Firefox was Chrome, when the comment read “firefox is not chromium”. I later realized(in the above edit) that they must have written “firefox is chromium”, before editing it to “firefox is not chromium” after realizing he messed the comment up.

[–] beatle@aussie.zone 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Incorrect dukk. Firefox isn’t built on Chromium, Firefox predates google let alone Google chromium.

[–] dukk@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m not saying Firefox uses Chromium? I specifically said that Firefox ISN’T based off Chrome/Chromium.

Edit: Never mind, I see that I messed up the post.

[–] Venicon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

But you left it up like a real OG, respect.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Firefox is the only major browser standing today that's not based on Chromium, so you're right there.

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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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 11 months 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 11 months ago

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

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nope. Firefox doesn’t use Chromium at all. It’s based on Gecko, an entirely different codebase that predates chromium.