XML is really great for its intended problem domain. Try to represent XHTML or DOCBOOK or similar rich-document formats as JSON and it will be a disaster. But

XML is really great for its intended problem domain. Try to represent XHTML or DOCBOOK or similar rich-document formats as JSON and it will be a disaster. But for structured data you don't need the verbosity and extra baggage of XML, JSON is simply a cleaner solution. Problem is, people are looking for one-size-fits-all solution, but no format will be optimal for all use cases. XML is a passable all-round format though, even if it is not always optimal.