I’ve been using Gazebo since the very early days. At the time, there were not as many choices out there as today. Gazebo made robot simulation easily accessible, and it grew together with ROS itself. I guess that’s the reason why it remains influential in the ROS community even today.
That said, I would not recommend Gazebo as the first choice to someone new to ROS and robot simulation TODAY. Due to its long history, there is a lot of information about it on the Internet, but a lot of it is outdated. The migration to Ignition (but later back to the Gazebo name again) only made the situation worse. In my opinion, Webots is a lot more beginner-friendly. Its UI is more polished, and the documentation is more complete and systematic (not saying it’s perfect, though). Other simulators like Mujoco, IsaacSim, or game-engine-based simulators also have their advantages for specific use cases. I don’t limit myself to any single simulator. In the end, a simulator is just a tool, and it doesn’t matter which one you prefer as long as it solves your problem and you feel comfortable with it.