I don’t understand what you mean by JSON was not invented. It was invented by Douglas Crockford. Before he invented JSON, we used XML to pass data around the web. After he invented JSON, it took quite awhile to catch on. There were many years of transition where some web services would only send xml and others could send xml or json. Eventually all web services gave you the choice of which one it would send. And then, gradually, xml was transitioned out and everything was json.