How do you measure "success"? Everywhere you are running L2, you are running L1, so it's just as common.

L2 switching also requires the Spanning Tree Protocol, which is definitely not a well-liked part of the stack.

There are a lot of L1 layers that have been used under Ethernet. There were several revisions of the coaxial cable used for ethernet before we switched to the rj45 terminated twisted copper cable everyone thinks of when you say "ethernet". Again, there are several iterations for the twisted copper physical layer.

More recently, we also run ethernet over optical fibers. The varience within the fiber family of cables is probably greater than the variance in either copper or coax.

Ethernet has also been run over power cables.