I see language as a personal choice, and while I wouldn't run perl today (I'm partial to Python, myself), I think there stack is fairly simple - tried & true language (however quirky it may be), no virtualization, simple metal hardware stack, and yet they serve an incredible number of users. In that sense, I'm sure hiring Larry was a no-brainer.
They are no FB, but they're bigger than almost anything else on the web [0]. I doubt most people will build anything bigger in their careers. I certainly won't.
A huge caveat might be app features. Clearly running something like travelocity could require more pieces, and something like a BI app in a fortune 100 company would have many more connectors to data sources. But in general, they've done pretty well using only newer versions of what worked way back in 1999, and to me, that's just incredible.
They are no FB, but they're bigger than almost anything else on the web [0]. I doubt most people will build anything bigger in their careers. I certainly won't.
A huge caveat might be app features. Clearly running something like travelocity could require more pieces, and something like a BI app in a fortune 100 company would have many more connectors to data sources. But in general, they've done pretty well using only newer versions of what worked way back in 1999, and to me, that's just incredible.
[0] - https://www.semrush.com/blog/most-visited-websites/