> I can't think of any other reason for agreeing with you (thought XPath is reason enough).

Streaming JSON API/parsers are not wide-spread (and definitely not as widespread as SAX-style streaming XML parsers), which makes JSON unusable for datasets which don't fit in memory.

And generally spreaking, I think most people would be satisfied with a CSS-type query language, I'm always surprised by the dislike my colleagues have for xpath and their lack of knowledge of it, even though xpath is one of the very few things I like in the XML infosphere (the other one being RelaxNG)