Flock â?? the so-called social web browser â?? has dumped its traditional Firefox core in favor of Chromium, the open source incarnation of Google's Chrome browser. CEO Shawn Hardin calls Flock 3 â?? released today as a public beta â?? the first major browser other than Chrome to use a Chromium base, and in making the switch, the Silicon Valley outfit is dumping nearly six years of history. The Flock dev team began building browsers from a Mozilla base in late 2004, which predates the arrival of Firefox 1.0. Before going to work on their eponymous social browser, the team helped develop Netscape 8.x, the first AOL Netscape browser based on Firefox.