VP9 is more on the level of H265 really. VVC/H266 is closer to AV1. It's not an exact comparison but it is close. The licensing is just awful for VVC similar to HEVC and now that AV1 has proved itself everyone is pivoting away from VVC/h266 especially on the consumer side. Pretty much all VVC adoption is entirely internal (studios, set top boxes, etc) and it is not used by any major consumer streaming service afaik.
I'm well aware of dark shikari. While there are obvious differences technologically and subjectively, on a generational level vp9 and HEVC are both positioned as h264 successors. We all know h264 is brilliant and flexible and very capable. Many companies were looking for an alternative with better licensing; on2's vp8 was Google's first push, but it still lagged behind h264, even though it used many of the same concepts and limitations. Vp9 and HEVC were certainly the next generation and competed with each other directly, really. Among the larger consumer video services, many keep h264 for compatibility, and reserve higher quality or resolutions or frame rates for the newer codecs. tiktok eventually settled on HEVC as its preferred codec, while Instagram used HEVC for a short while before migrating entirely to vp9.
Other developers ran into a ton of issues with licensing HEVC for their own software which is still a complete pain.
Anyway, people are now looking at what's next. VVC came out quite a while ago, and AV1 more recently, but when people are looking for the current sota codec with at least some good support, they end up choosing between the two, realistically. And yeah, VVC has advantages over AV1 and they are very different technically. But the market has pretty loudly spoken that VVC is a hassle no one wants to mess with, and AV1 is quickly becoming the ubiquitous codec with the closest rival VVC offering little to offset the licensing troubles (and lack of hardware support at this point as well)
Anyway, just saying. VVC is a huge pain. HEVC still is a huge pain, and though I prefer it to vp9 and it has much better quality and capabilities, the licensing issue makes it troublesome in so many ways. But the choice almost always comes down to vp9 or HEVC, then AV1 or VVC. Though at this point it might as well be, in order, h264, vp9, HEVC, AV1, and no one really cares about VVC.
