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Postgres started in 1986. its was never less featureful than MySQL...in fact MySQL tried to get by without _transactions_ for the longest time. the fact that MySQL had more market/mindshare at any point is more of a testament about crowd mentality than anything about either of the two databases.

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I remember maybe circa 2004 debating Postgres and mysql with a colleague. I told him to unplug the machine that was hosting his mysql instance. He did and corrupted his database. He said it didn't matter, he had backups, speed was more important :p This was before mysql had the innodb storage engine, after that it wasn't so bad. I have always stood by Postgres though, it's a fantastic piece of open source software.

Sorry - I said functionality but meant performance. Doesn't look I can edit my post anymore. I don't know if that was even true, but that was what the wisdom of the crowds said at the time.

MySql did have better insert performance for a while, but this was due to unsafe defaults in conjunction with no transactions, which is only a good tradeoff if you're storing disposable data.

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