“ In the 2000s, the conventional wisdom selected MySQL because rising tech stars like Google and Facebook were using it. Then in the 2010s, it was MongoDB because non-durable writes made it “webscale“. In the last five years, PostgreSQL has become the Internet’s darling DBMS. And for good reasons! It’s dependable, feature-rich, extensible, and well-suited for most operational workloads.”
Smart engineers were choosing postgres not because of the logical fallacy of popularum, but for the following reasons:
Data safety - not MyIsam, ACID, Similarity to Oracle, MVCC, SQL standards adherence, Postgres team, Helpful awesome community, Data types, High performance, BSD flexibility
Above are the reasons I selected Postgres while at ATT early 2000s and our Oracle DBA found it a very easy transition. While Mysql went through rough transitions, PG has gone from strength to strength and ever improving path.
I think Bruce Momjian is a big part of this success; they truly have an excellent community. <3