You were definitely working in a "very specific context"!
Also, I think that you have to consider how a company grows: JSON is simple to get started with. It's a good default - pretty much anyone can consume it very easily. As you explore your problem space and iterate and improve, you may realize it's not good enough. Fair enough - that's a good time to switch. But many people never reach that point, and will happily continue with JSON for a long time.
Comments
You were definitely working in a "very specific context"!
Also, I think that you have to consider how a company grows: JSON is simple to get started with. It's a good default - pretty much anyone can consume it very easily. As you explore your problem space and iterate and improve, you may realize it's not good enough. Fair enough - that's a good time to switch. But many people never reach that point, and will happily continue with JSON for a long time.
That's not invalid and I don't debate that. JSON is obviously ubiquitous. It's just a bad format. A typical case of worse is better.
https://github.com/johnezang/JSONKit has a few interesting corner cases, for example.