[tannhaeuser]

Yes JSON is much easier to parse than XML, and is preferred when it fits such as for most Web API requests and responses.

However, SGML and XML were invented as structured markup languages for authoring of rich text documents by humans, for which JSON is unsuited and sucks just as much as XML sucks for APIs.

Edit: though XML has its place in many b2b and business-to-government data exchanges (financial and tax reporting, medical data exchange, and many others) where a robust and capable up-front data format specification for complex data is required