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Some will blame Google for the demise of JPEG XL, but I think that's a red herring. JPEG XL includes Google technologies such as Pik and Guetzli/Brunsli. Some o

Some will blame Google for the demise of JPEG XL, but I think that's a red herring. JPEG XL includes Google technologies such as Pik and Guetzli/Brunsli. Some of the JXL developers are Google employees. Google doesn't have a profit motive to promote one format over another. Their upper management most likely isn't even aware that JPEG XL exists. It also doesn't explain why Mozilla and Apple are favoring AVIF too. Nonetheless, there's no question that JPEG XL was sabotaged. AVIF was enabled by default in Chrome the day it was implemented, JXL had to go through an experimental period. At some point, Mozilla developers were told to stop working on improving their JXL implementation and they couldn't even merge already developed patches.[1] Google's justifications for the removal were baffling. They said there's "not enough interest" despite all the hype, all the major companies requesting JXL support.[2] They claimed JXL doesn't bring "sufficient benefits", despite the numerous advantages, such as lossless JPEG recompression. They published their flawed[3] benchmarks weeks after they made the decision to remove JPEG XL. BTW, the removal happened immediately after Adobe announced they are supporting JPEG XL in one of their products. Almost as if they realized that JXL may be gaining too much support and it's time to pull the plug. So who's behind this if not Google? To me, the most likely suspect is AOM, the Alliance for Open Media. The people who are involved in AOM also the ones who make the decisions in the browsers. What are their motives? I don't know, pettiness? Maybe they just want their format to win. [1] - https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D119700#3977128 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D119700#3977128 [2] - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1178058#c84 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=117805... [3] - https://cloudinary.com/blog/contemplating-codec-comparisons https://cloudinary.com/blog/contemplating-codec-comparisons

tpolzer 4y ago
Some people try to spin this as a Google vs open standards, while it's mostly a Google devs vs. some other Google devs situation: If you look at https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/graphs/contributors, ~everybody except Jon Sneyers is a Google employee (I think the AVIF ratio is similar, but I didn't check). So the question isn't about which format is better, but who won internal politics and it's clearly the AVIF folks - for reasons which aren't really possible to tell from the outside.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  Sure is comforting to know that office politics ruins everything, including technical innovation.
  - ksec 4y ago
    Apple used to pick and champion technical innovation, and worked around politics, ideology or cost ( patent ) issues. Unfortunately that is no longer the case.
    - indolering 4y ago
      That has never been true. Steve Jobs split the company into warring factions with the Lisa and when that failed Jobs took over Wozniak's Macintosh project and restarted the civil war all over again. Apple LOVES proprietary standards like Lightning despite harming UX because of their "fuck you pay me" attitude towards their customers. I advise against glorifying a rich asshole who died from cancer because they thought they could cure it with fruit juice.
    - izacus 4y ago
      This is utter crock, they always heavily preferred close proprietary format they themselves held parents for.
Jasper_ 4y ago
Is there a published, freely available specification for JPEG-XL yet? The W3C publishes JPEG and PNG specifications, and AVIF can be found on the AOM website. One big issue with JPEG-XL is that the specification is closed. The old drafts I have found were extremely poor. I have heard that the actual spec is apparently better, but I cannot find a copy of it myself.
- jonsneyers 4y ago
  See also: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/31/iso_paywall_battle/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/31/iso_paywall_battle/
  - Jasper_ 4y ago
    I mean, I agree with that, sure, but I can't imagine it changing any time soon. Ultimately, the JPEG-XL team made the choice was made to standardize the format within the JPEG WG of ISO, and for better or worse, this has had a pretty substantial effect on adoption. Maybe next time make better choices.

tpolzer 4y ago

Some people try to spin this as a Google vs open standards, while it's mostly a Google devs vs. some other Google devs situation: If you look at https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/graphs/contributors https://github.com/libjxl/libjxl/graphs/contributors, ~everybody except Jon Sneyers is a Google employee (I think the AVIF ratio is similar, but I didn't check). So the question isn't about which format is better, but who won internal politics and it's clearly the AVIF folks - for reasons which aren't really possible to tell from the outside.

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
Sure is comforting to know that office politics ruins everything, including technical innovation.
- ksec 4y ago
  Apple used to pick and champion technical innovation, and worked around politics, ideology or cost ( patent ) issues. Unfortunately that is no longer the case.
  - indolering 4y ago
    That has never been true. Steve Jobs split the company into warring factions with the Lisa and when that failed Jobs took over Wozniak's Macintosh project and restarted the civil war all over again. Apple LOVES proprietary standards like Lightning despite harming UX because of their "fuck you pay me" attitude towards their customers. I advise against glorifying a rich asshole who died from cancer because they thought they could cure it with fruit juice.
  - izacus 4y ago
    This is utter crock, they always heavily preferred close proprietary format they themselves held parents for.

Jasper_ 4y ago

Is there a published, freely available specification for JPEG-XL yet? The W3C publishes JPEG and PNG specifications, and AVIF can be found on the AOM website. One big issue with JPEG-XL is that the specification is closed. The old drafts I have found were extremely poor. I have heard that the actual spec is apparently better, but I cannot find a copy of it myself.

jonsneyers 4y ago
See also: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/31/iso_paywall_battle/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/31/iso_paywall_battle/
- Jasper_ 4y ago
  I mean, I agree with that, sure, but I can't imagine it changing any time soon. Ultimately, the JPEG-XL team made the choice was made to standardize the format within the JPEG WG of ISO, and for better or worse, this has had a pretty substantial effect on adoption. Maybe next time make better choices.