Erlang is used by companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, T-Mobile, and Ericsson for building reliable and scalable systems. It is well-suited for building messaging systems, databases, and social/chat applications. The document discusses Erlang use cases and provides an example of how it allows building the same blackjack checking functionality with much less code compared to C#. It also promotes learning Erlang by discussing salaries, reliability, and recommends books and resources for getting started.