Yes, VB is popular back then and is very easy to learn. I wonder why VB.Net is not as popular as C# nowadays given that they have the same access to .NET Framework.
Most of the VB.Net adopters came from VB6, only to find out that VB.Net had very little in common with VB other than syntax. If you had to learn a whole new framework and ecosystem anyway, there were more popular options available for VB refugees out there like C# or Python.