I would argue that Perl failed instead because it was better suited for short scripts than for large and complex web applications, and because its syntax was so beginner-unfriendly that it never attracted the new wave of developers who were getting into the game around the time that Rails became popularized.

This was compounded by the fact that nobody wrote a hot new RAD framework in it that would serve to attract people to a challenging and otherwise niche language.

In 2001, if you wanted to hack on simple interactive websites, Perl was probably your best choice - it was one of the few scripting languages supported out of the box by cheap shared hosting providers.

By 2004 that role had been supplanted by PHP, and by 2011 web development was nothing like it had been a decade ago, and there was no niche in which Perl was a better or easier choice than several alternatives.

Python, on the other hand, has way more momentum. Sure, web development could go another direction in the next decade. But Python has an enormous community and ecosystem. Plus it’s used for a broad variety of purposes - from web to desktop development to data science.

More importantly, it’s a widely used teaching language. Unlike what happened with Perl, a huge portion of the next generation of developers will enter the workforce already knowing Python; and those who don’t will likely not only encounter it but find it relatively easy to pick up.