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> I didn't know that Protobuf wasn't canonical but even without this knowledge, there are many other factors which make it an inferior format to JSON.

If strict typing and versioning are useless to you, sure.

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While protobuf comes with the strict parser built in, it's certainly possible to work with JSON in such a way that it is effectively strictly typed and versioned. These factors aren't really a "key difference" between the two formats, so much as an ergonomic one, imo

Yep. I prefer handling the versioning and validation separately of the parsing. You need to define your schema regardless, then untrusted data from clients must be validated against it. I tend to prefer separation of concerns.

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