chrome did not have extensions when launched, and firebug was far superior back then. it was a long time before extensions came maybe even 2010. they did not run with what ff did, far from it.
I wouldn't claim firebug was "far superior", unless "far superior" is a synonym of bloated.
Since their inception the dev tools were minimalistic (just the DOM Inspector and a JS Console), currently the Dev Tools of Chrome could get some trimming, ex. some tabs such as Sources and Resources could get merged.
