It was a design decision, and like most design decisions, it was based on first principles and a-priori knowledge. If we had to base all of our design decisions

It was a design decision, and like most design decisions, it was based on first principles and a-priori knowledge. If we had to base all of our design decisions on data and benchmarks, we wouldn’t be able to design anything. I can assure you, that if a better format with better properties came around, we would likely switch to it (assuming we accounted for switching cost and the variation we would be introducing).