Is there a standard mapping between JSON and Protocol Buffers?

Question

From a comment on the announcement blog post:

Regarding JSON: JSON is structured similarly to Protocol Buffers, but protocol buffer binary format

Answer 1

Yes, since Protocol Buffers version 3.0.0 (released July 28, 2016) there is "A well-defined encoding in JSON as an alternative to binary proto encoding" as mentioned in the release notes

https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/tag/v3.0.0