TL;DR Since 2010 file formats have gone from desktop‑centric, proprietary blobs to open, cloud‑native, and AI‑ready containers. The biggest shifts are:
Cloud‑first storage – formats now support streaming, partial reads, and real‑time collaboration (Google Docs, Office 365). Open‑standard momentum – royalty‑free codecs (AV1, AVIF, WebP) and data formats (Parquet, Arrow) dominate to avoid vendor lock‑in. Compression & bandwidth efficiency – HEVC, AV1, JPEG‑XL, Zstandard, and Brotli cut file sizes 30‑60 % while preserving quality.