I guess that they purposefully did not use JSON or any other widely used format to avoid giving the appearance that that format is required or encouraged. As f

I guess that they purposefully did not use JSON or any other widely used format to avoid giving the appearance that that format is required or encouraged. As for copying/sharing links, I think that was covered in another discussion above: Just like with POST, it's likely just not intended to do QUERY requests via links or through the URL bar.