Comment by toyg
Nah, we still have all those issues and more.
The hard truth is that XML lost to the javascript-native format (JSON). Any JavaScript-native format would have won, because "the web" effectively became the world of JavaScript. XML was not js-friendly enough: the parsing infrastructure was largely based on C/C++/Java, and then you'd get back objects with verbose interfaces (again, a c++/java thing) rather than the simple, nested dictionaries that less-skilled "JS-first" developers felt at ease with.
The thing is, JSON is even superior in C++.
It's a dumber format but that makes it a better lingua franca between all sorts of programming languages, not just Javascript, especially if you haven't locked in on a schema.
Once you have locked in on a schema and IDL-style tooling to autogenerate adapter classes/objects, then non-JSON interchange formats become viable (if not superior). But even in that world, I'd rather have something like gRPC over XML.