You're right. SVG2 requires full CSS support. CSS brings lots of complexity, like calc(), CSS variables and so on. All that is needed, because web developers use SVG2 inline in HTML documents. It is also becoming more common to embed HTML in SVG. It's going to be one big tag soup. All that is better for the web, but worse as a stable image format.

There are also plans to create SVG-in-OpenType fonts, which would embed SVG inside web fonts. I have very mixed feelings about that. It is nice to have fonts with multiple colors, gradients and animations. On the other hand, do I want to have the same compatibility problems with fonts as I already have with HTML/SVG? I'm almost hoping that SVG-in-OT fails and Microsoft's simpler multi-color font format wins.

It saddens me a bit, actually. SVG had lots of features way before CSS and now they're forced to adopt them to not confuse people who use HTML/CSS. CSS to my knowledge never even tried adopting features in an SVG-compatible way.

I think what's really missing is an open binary vector graphics format which is compact and easy to parse. Adobe Flash's shape format is the closest I can think of at the moment.

You mean that PNG, the reason why we still use GIFs? ;)

Few people actually use GIFs anymore. Most image host convert them to video.

Some important browsers still don't have a good video image story, and most SMS/chat systems are even worse. We generate animated gifs for our 3D animated emoji and stickers.

Wow. I didn't know that.

This is pretty interesting where imgur has a http://imgur.com/r/gifs section but it's all mp4.

Citation? Why Do I see .gif in most animated images then. Or the lack of a video player thing when I click them.

Try right-clicking on the .gif and select "show controls", if it's there. This works for me most of the time. It doesn't work at all for real .gif files, but it's true that most ".gif" files are actually auto-play looping videos with no sound and hidden controls.

Imgur and Gfycat convert gifs to either WebM or MP4—making them videos.

Imgur also introduced gifv—a faux extension—to easily identify video-enhanced gifs.

Of course, the internet is still full of glorious 256-color, chunky-sized traditional gifs.