They’re not googling. Google is useful but sometimes has incorrect answers. The truth is we probably won’t know the true first browser with tabs. It could have been before the one you found.
These people are saying “I personally used browser Z with tabs before your example Browser A was even released”. If enough people continue the chain, we’ll get to “the oldest tabbed browser that anyone on HN remembers using”.
The nice thing about these anecdotes is that they can generally be validated quickly and easily. But your google result cannot be validated easily.
The easiest way to track it down isn't looking for the oldest memory. It's looking for reviews of Firefox when tabs were added and looking for the ones that complain about that earlier browser doing it better.
Related to this, the first browser I experienced with tabs was a custom VB3 wrapper around shdocvw.dll (IE) somewhere around early Windows 9x that I wrote myself. I'm not suggesting I invented tabbed browsing and certainly that VB project never influenced anyone else, I just find it a fun anecdote.
Way to jump in with a quick retort, when GP already conceded that Opera wasn't the first browser with tabs. But it was arguably the first browser that popularized tabs.
Besides, their point was refuting the "Firefox invented tabs" statement, which is valid.
