Git succeeded to large degree because of GitHub, yes. But that isn't how it happened at all. They built an amazing product that people loved, there was nothing even vaguely like it before, and it earned its adoption through providing a superior product than the competition, by leaps and bounds.
It ended on a bitter note when Microsoft bought them, sure. But let's not rewrite history, GitHub was not dumped on the market by deep-pocketed VCs. GitHub was self-funded from 2007 to 2012, at which point it was wildly popular and used a big cash injection to get to where it is now. By the time that happened it had the #1 position in commits per month and was about to become #1 in repos hosted also.
Git and Mercurial both were initially released in the same month (April 2005), and DVCSs had existed for some time before [0]. Linus even considered Monotone, which is also based on SHA-1 hashes, as a replacement for Bitkeeper before starting his own Git. Most people who worked with both Mercurial and Git consider Mercurial’s UI to be superior. It was mostly the draw of Linus and then GitHub that made Git “win”.
It ended on a bitter note when Microsoft bought them, sure. But let's not rewrite history, GitHub was not dumped on the market by deep-pocketed VCs. GitHub was self-funded from 2007 to 2012, at which point it was wildly popular and used a big cash injection to get to where it is now. By the time that happened it had the #1 position in commits per month and was about to become #1 in repos hosted also.