Just as ZIP is a mediocre compression algorithm that is supported basically everywhere.
Today we have larger storage and faster bandwidth than ever before so it’s easy to trade off compression for ease.
Same goes with mp3. Back in the day, Microsoft was touting that WMA could replicate the quality of MP3 128kbps at just 64kbps. I bought in and mass converted my entire library because of the high space savings. Now… I have a library of music that has so many artifacts in it, I can listen to it. At the time, the space saving may have been worth it but I now regret it.
Saying that DEFLATE is mediocre is absurd. There's a reason it's still in use after 30 years (and it's not merely inertia). Before zstandard arrived to the scene there was literally nothing able to achieve the same ratio as deflate without taking 10x longer.
This is unlike WMA/WMV which, I agree, were pretty much already obsolete by the time they came out.
You are overseeing how demand is still increasing I believe. Faster bandwidth than ever before is met by higher demand than ever before and it will continue like this for a while.
60fps HDR 4k Content will become normal, eating away at bandwidth availability, meaning that any possible savings will still be relevant, for example in still images.
Today we have larger storage and faster bandwidth than ever before so it’s easy to trade off compression for ease.
Same goes with mp3. Back in the day, Microsoft was touting that WMA could replicate the quality of MP3 128kbps at just 64kbps. I bought in and mass converted my entire library because of the high space savings. Now… I have a library of music that has so many artifacts in it, I can listen to it. At the time, the space saving may have been worth it but I now regret it.