Vim is a text editor that grew into an ecosystem of people bolting on additional functionality. While extensibility is possible, it's nowhere near as transparent and consistent as the emacs environment. In fact no system I know of comes even close.
Emacs paved the way for the features we take for granted in graphical applications like undo, copy+paste, search, find+replace, spell check, project navigation, code completion, auto-formatting, and of course, plugins.
These days, indeed much of the appeal is gone if all you're doing is comparing features at a surface level.
Yes, it looks like all editors "do the same thing" but really emacs is quite different in spirit.
The fact that vi iMproved became the dominant implementation isn't particularly relevant here.
I think it is. Most vim users I know have never used vi and would hate it.
As a reminder: In vi, when you go into "insert" mode, you cannot edit anything prior to where the cursor was when you entered insert mode. vim got rid of such annoyances.
> If emacs adopted vim-like keybindings early on
I consider it obvious that "vim-like" keybindings are also "vi-like" keybindings, and that emacs could in fact have adopted them before the invention of vim.
It wouldn't have of course; when the Editor Wars were truly raging, the modal vs. modeless debate was at the heart of the partisanship. But that's a separate question.
Vim is... a text editor.