@daftkey The following things helped make IPv4 last longer:
-NAT. By allowing people to essentially hide their networks behind a single IP address, that allowed more machines to use less IP addresses.
-Taking back huge chunks of unused IP addresses. Many early adopters bought the huge class A chunks of the address space which they barely used, and many of them gave it back.
-The move to CIDR, which allows more granular control over how many IP addresses you can own. The class based system turned out to be very wasteful, as moving up in a class gave you a whopping 256 times more IP addresses, even if you never used them. Now it's more like 2x with CIDR.
Indeed, these three changes to IPv4 gave it a much longer life than originally thought. However: They only pushed the problem back further, they did not completely solve it. Ultimately, IPv6 is the real solution to the problem.
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