&gt;&gt;The strangest thing to me is not that MySQL is more popular than Postgres, but that anyone uses Microsoft or Oracle at all. Not only do they cost a lot, but from a purely technical standpoint they are worse.<p>A lot of decisions are made holistically instead of a &quot;purely technical standpoint&quot;. In large companies where there are still IT departments (e.g. use of Active Directory), MS is still very much the de facto platform, and SQL Server is the &quot;logical&quot; choice.