Thanks for the link. That certainly shows that Google was sponsoring an aggressive and fairly ugly ad campaign.
> UI was comparable.
They were not at all comparable. Here is an image of what Firefox looked like when Chrome was released [1]. Here is an image of what Chrome looked like at release [2]. Barring some design tweaks Chrome looks roughly like any modern browser whereas Firefox looks ancient by modern standards. It has the app menu, no integration with window decoration, a separate search box, tabs below the address bar, etc. Lots of things that Firefox would copy over the coming years. There's a reason Chrome was named after its Chrome–the UI was a huge selling point.
The bookmarks could be turned off in FF and many other things changed with extensions. Overall... I can see how someone could say they're different, but it's a "meh" for me. Yeah, they're different but not in a meaningful way for me.
> UI was comparable.
They were not at all comparable. Here is an image of what Firefox looked like when Chrome was released [1]. Here is an image of what Chrome looked like at release [2]. Barring some design tweaks Chrome looks roughly like any modern browser whereas Firefox looks ancient by modern standards. It has the app menu, no integration with window decoration, a separate search box, tabs below the address bar, etc. Lots of things that Firefox would copy over the coming years. There's a reason Chrome was named after its Chrome–the UI was a huge selling point.
1: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/25581533/141687681... 2: https://blogoscoped.com/files/google-chrome-browsing/search-...