goons are like triumvirate? negative. sorry broski
'05 vet here, feel free to ask anything, but as a current member of tri and an active participant in a lot of eve's history (usually on the losing side) in the 05-07 era... here are some plot points you're missing
tri started as a couple pirate corps living out of lowsec aridia (ync, d00m, exanimo) and only derped into holding sov in deklein after disbanding and reforming (tri mk2)
goons started well before there was a gooncorp proper - there were lots of other attempts at a unified SA corp in eve, like yulai financial.
goons got their first sov from red alliance, down in the far southeast. they helped in some wars with the russians, got a couch to crash on, great arrangement really
bob hated goons. i'm sure you know who bob are, even if you left in 2005. bob hated goons so much they were willing to devote their whole gameplay experience to killing goons... if they weren't busy subjugating literally the entirety of eve (seriously bob came really fucking close to winning eve in like 2007)
goons decided to fight back, and rallied around the northern coalition, with the russians, to start the first great war circa 2006 and push bob back to just delve and querious. of course, sov warfare has always heavily favored the defender, and bob didn't die out completely... just mostly.
bob came back and was making powerplays again, until the second great war started and they got pushed back to delve again - longtime allies mercenary coalition decided they were done being lapdogs and reset bob, along with fellow merc alliance kia, and formed the short-lived "tortuga" coalition out of period basis - one of the catalysts for the fall of bob.
a director of bob, haargoth agamar, had an alt in goons presumably as a spy but found he enjoyed the goon gameplay style much more, got in contact with the goons' spymaster at the time (the mittani) and ended up disbanding the bob alliance. bob had an alt alliance ready to go for damage control, but the sov drop from disbanding the alliance was bob's death knell
they reformed as IT alliance, but it was never the same
after the second great war, goons took delve and fountain, two of the richest regions in the game, and began forming their own minicoalition.
around this time (2008ish) tri reformed for tri mk3, living out of venal and punching northern coalition alliances directly in their mouths while the big boys (morsus mihi, tcf, razor) were south to play with goons. the nc came back north, and tri disbanded again
in 2010, d00m formed ncdot, nuked providence, and started being pretty fucking intimidating. a border dispute sparked tensions between the northern coalition and the drone region russians, who then declared all-out war and paid pandemic legion (previously a nomadic, pirate alliance known for their supercap might and forward-thinking pvp doctrines) a whopping 600 billion isk to fight for their side
the north crumbled almost instantly under the combined might of pl, ncdot, goons, and the drone russians - everyone with a grudge against the nc, basically.
goons at this time had moved from delve and fountain on to greener pastures, mostly deklein and some other far-northwestern space
test alliance, the reddit alliance, initially inherited a small constellation in deklein as a "couch to crash on" from goons (the testagram) and eventually moved to fountain once they started pulling their weight as an alliance. tl;dr, drama happened, test turned their backs on goons, and now they are in providence playing spaceships against provi nerds
tri mk4, the current iteration, is currently living out of venal, harassing sma, fcon, and fatal ascension. goons are in peacetime mode so it's really only a matter of time before we decide to fuck off and do something else.
goddamn this is a long post. sorry.
anyhow the tl;dr of goons vs tri is that goons' main goal in eve is to piss people off and derive their enjoyment out of ruining everyone else's, and tri's main goal in eve is to have fun winning fights. it's a subtle difference but it's there, i assure you