I mean if you define superior not in terms of its technical merits but because of its blessed status by Google. It's not a terrible format but it is very much "what is the worst quality we can reasonably get away with to save on bandwidth." Such a thing does have its uses.
At some point you have to be pragmatic and meet users where they are but doesn't mean you have to like that Google did throw their weight around in a way that only they really can.
> I mean if you define superior not in terms of its technical merits
“Technical merits” are rarely, for anything, the sole measurement of fitness for purposes.
Even for purely internal uses, internal social, cultural, and non-technical business constraints often have a real impact on what is the best choice, and when you get out into wider uses with external uses, the non-technical factors proliferate. That's just reality.
I understand the aesthetic preference to have decisions only require considering a narrow set of technical criteria which you think should be important, but you will make suboptimal decisions in the vast majority of real-world circumstances if you pretend that the actual decision before you conforms to that aesthetic ideal.
At some point you have to be pragmatic and meet users where they are but doesn't mean you have to like that Google did throw their weight around in a way that only they really can.