Correct, It's often used in modern context when talking about what stock is powering the market right now. It's a "FAANG" market.

EDIT: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp

Oh, it's a stock thing? It makes more sense as Wall Street slang - in terms of the technological landscape, one of those companies is so obviously dissimilar to the others that the phrase makes little sense.

I don't understand by what metric Netflix is included but Microsoft is excluded. It should really be FAAMG, or maybe FAMANG.

The acronym was coined in 2013 to describe the best-performing tech stocks at the time. Microsoft's resurgence hadn't really happened yet. The acronym was so convenient that no one's updated it except to add Apple (which didn't require a change in pronunciation).

Well in this very specific context, it's hard to imagine that Microsoft will be avoiding using GitHub just because it's owned by Microsoft.

FAANG is used very generally to refer to these five companies. It's not just in this specific context. I'm wondering why Microsoft is excluded.

I see Big Four (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) more often than FANG although that is obviously confusing on Wall St where that phrase usually refers to the large accounting firms. Apple is excluded because it is a hardware company not a software company although sometimes it is subbed in for one of the others, depending on who is using the phrase.

If you include MS, you have to also include IBM. FAMAING.

I thought the N was Netscape, a major competitor to Microsoft (browser and server) and Google (browser)

Netscape was a competitor to Microsoft in the 90s, and it has never been a competitor to Google.