So why is almost nobody here actually defending it on its own merits? In my opinion XSLT was a bad idea ~20 years ago when I started in web development. It was convoluted, not nice to work with and the implementations buggy.
Most people seem to think it is bad because it is Google who want to remove it. Personally I just see Google finally doing something good.
There is so much defense of XSLT it’s crazy you assume no one is here defending it. This thread isn’t the single defense point against Google.
Not only that Google engineers Mason Freed has shown pretty forcefully that he will not listen to defense, reason or logic. This further evidenced by Google repeatedly trying to kill it for 25 years.
Google judged a 25 year old spec that is now 2 major versions out of date.