Founded in 1996,[1] Fireball was once the leading search engine in Germany, but quickly declined after being taken over by Lycos Europe and the rise of Google.

Fireball was originally called Flipper and started as a project of the Faculty of Computer Science at Technische Universität Berlin built by Oli Kai Paulus, Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen born Oertel,[2] Nurhan Yildirim and Benhui Chen as contract work for Gruner + Jahr,[3] one of Germany's largest publishing houses.

[8] The takeover by Lycos as well as the rise of Google caused Fireball to massively lose market-share within a short time.

[11] In 2009, Lycos Europe was dissolved and Fireball was sold to Swiss company Ambrosia AG, which ran the service until 2016.

A completely overhauled version of the service, with a strong focus on privacy, was launched the same year.