Ask HN: Why is React + Next.js so popular?

I'm about to start a side project that requires a frontend. First things first, I did some research on which framework to use. The obvious ones are React, Angular and Vue. After doing some research using Google (Blogs, Trends, NPM Stats etc.) and my favorite AI companion, I developed a sympathy towards Vue. I'm not exactly sure why. While researching I installed a browser extension to view the technologies used on a website. Whenever I visited a website that I liked (anthropic, openai, linear, notion), I checked what they were using. And this is what brings me to this question: most use React and Next.js. For a side project it's probably not important whether I use Vue or React and I should go with whatever I feel comfortable with but I was wondering why so many (popular) companies choose React + Next. Is it mostly about the ecosystem and community or is there more to it that I'm missing that makes React the obvious choice?