Programming

These are similar but distinct concepts. Most languages have a concept of (lexical) scope, which is how variables are resolved to their values. For instance,

var a = 10;
function foo() { return a; }

Here, a is in the global scope and it's referenced by the closure foo. Any changes made to a (so long as it isn't shadowed) will also appear in the a that can be seen inside foo.

JS is also what's called a prototype-based language, so it has an additional more exotic concept called the "prototype chain". This is how it implements something approximating OOP inheritance - essentially, if I request obj.x, JS will first check if obj has the x property, and if it doesn't find it, it follows the __proto__ (note: nonstandard) value to get the prototype of that object and checks there. If that prototype doesn't have x, the process continues until it reaches the end of the chain.

The JS global object (also called window in the browser - which has a reference to itself called window) is part of lexical scoping, but not the prototype chain. The global object is the end of the scope chain, but the end of the prototype chain is Object.getPrototypeOf(Object.prototype) == null (note: we need to get the prototype of Object.prototype because Object is the constructor function, not the prototype)

Window is the constructor of the window object, Object.getPrototypeOf(window) == Window.prototype and window.constructor == Window. It's a weird quirk of Javascript, "classes" are actually the constructor, and when we prototype a new object it prototypes that function's prototype property.