I think this is closest to the truth. Microservices allowed each team to own their own container/jdk and support what they wanted to from the frameworks they were using (mostly spring).

It was trivial then to supply the company with packages that made communication between services as simple as throwing a pojo over the fence. This was simplified again with messaging protocols like protobuf.

Just to add some infrared to an already colorful description of “how we got here”.