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They didn't "lose interest", their lawyers pulled the emergency brakes. Blame patent holders, not Google. Like Microsoft: https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17

They didn't "lose interest", their lawyers pulled the emergency brakes. Blame patent holders, not Google. Like Microsoft: https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/. Microsoft could probably be convinced to be reasonable. But there may be a few others. Google actually also holds some patents over this but they've done the right thing and license those patents along with their implementation. To fix this, you'd need to convince Google, and other large companies that would be exposed to law suits related to these patents (Apple, Adobe, etc.), that these patent holders are not going to insist on being compensated. Other formats are less risky; especially the older ones. Jpeg is fine because it's been out there for so long that any patents applicable to it have long expired. Same with GIF, which once was held up by patents. Png is at this point also fine. If any patents applied at all they will soon have expired as the PNG standard dates back to 1997 and work on it depended on research from the seventies and eighties.

lifthrasiir 3y ago
> [...] other large companies that would be exposed to law suits related to these patents (Apple, Adobe, etc.) [...] Adobe included JPEG XL support to their products and also the DNG specification. So that argument is pretty much dead, no?
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  Not that simple. Maybe they struck a deal with a few of the companies or they made a different risk calculation. And of course they have a pretty fierce patent portfolio themselves so there's the notion of them being able to retaliate in kind to some of these companies.
  - lifthrasiir 3y ago
    I don't think that's true (see my other comment for what the patent is really about), but even when it is, Adobe's adoption means that JPEG XL is worth the supposed "risk". And Google does ship a lot of technologies that are clearly patent-encumbered. If the patent is the main concern, they could have answered so because there are enough people wondering about the patent status, but the Chrome team's main reason against JPEG XL was quite different.
- izacus 3y ago
  Adobe also has an order of magnitude lower number of installed software than Chrome or Firefox which makes patent fees much cheaper. And their software is actually paid for by users.
  - spider-mario 3y ago
    DNG Converter (which includes JPEG XL compression) isn’t paid. You can get it here: https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter.html https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter...
- luma 3y ago
  Adobe sells paid products and can carve out a license fee for that, like they do with all the other codecs and libraries they bundle. That's part of the price you are paying. Harder to do for users of Chrome.
  - lifthrasiir 3y ago
    The same thing can be said with many patent-encumbered video codecs which Chrome does support nevertheless. That alone can't be a major deciding factor, especially given that the rate of JPEG XL adoption has been remarkably faster than any recent media format.
    - afavour 3y ago
      Is this not simply a risk vs reward calculation? Newer video codecs present a very notable bandwidth saving over old ones. JPEG XL presents minor benefits over WebP, AVIF, etc. So while the dangers are the same for both the calculation is different.
      - KingOfCoders 3y ago
        Video = billions lower costs for Youtube.
  - spider-mario 3y ago
    You can get Adobe DNG Converter for free and use it to convert your raw files to DNG compressed with JPEG XL. https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/camera-raw/digital-negative/jcr_content/root/content/flex/items/position/position-par/download_section/download-1/dng_converter_commandline.pdf https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/camera-raw/digit...
zokier 3y ago
> their lawyers pulled the emergency brakes Do you have source for that claim?
- kasabali 3y ago
  Probably this: https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/ I think it would be much better for everyone involved and humanity if Mr. Duda himself got the patent in the first place instead of praying no one else will.
  - mananaysiempre 3y ago
    Duda published his ideas, that’s supposed to be it.
  - lonjil 3y ago
    Prior art makes patents invalid anyway.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      Absolutely. And nothing advances your career quite like getting your employer into a multi-year legal battle and spending a few million on legal fees, to make some images 20% smaller and 100% less compatible.
      - lonjil 3y ago
        Well, lots of things other than JXL use ANS. If someone starts trying to claim ANS, you'll have Apple, Disney, Facebook, and more, on your side :)
    - mort96 3y ago
      But that doesn't matter. If a patent is granted, choosing to infringe on it is risky, even if you believe you could make a solid argument that it's invalid given enough lawyer hours.
peppermint_gum 3y ago
>To fix this, you'd need to convince Google, and other large companies that would be exposed to law suits related to these patents (Apple, Adobe, etc.), that these patent holders are not going to insist on being compensated. Apple has implemented JPEG XL support in macOS and iOS. Adobe has also implemented support for JPEG XL in their products. Also, if patents were the reason Google removed JXL from Chrome, why would they make up technical reasons for doing so? Please don't present unsourced conspiracy theories as if they were confirmed facts.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - lonjil 3y ago
    Mate, you're literally pulling something from your ass. Chrome engineers claim that they don't want JXL because it isn't good enough. Literally no one involved has said that it has anything to do with patents.
  - Scaevolus 3y ago
    If you want a simple conspiracy theory, how about this: The person responsible for AVIF works on Chrome, and is responsible for choosing which codecs Chrome ships with. He obviously prefers his AVIF to a different team's JPEG-XL. It's a case of simple selfish bias.
  - JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago
    Why not take Chrome's word for it: ---cut--- Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for the web. With respect to new image formats such as JPEG XL, that means we have to look comprehensively at many factors: compression performance across a broad range of images; is the decoder fast, allowing for speedy rendering of smaller images; are there fast encoders, ideally with hardware support, that keep encoding costs reasonable for large users; can we optimize existing formats to meet any new use-cases, rather than adding support for an additional format; do other browsers and OSes support it? After weighing the data, we’ve decided to stop Chrome’s JPEG XL experiment and remove the code associated with the experiment. [...] From: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/WjCKcBw219k/m/xX-NnWtTBQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/WjCKc...
JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago
That ANS patent supposedly relates to refining the coding tables based on symbols being decided. It is slower for decoding and Jpeg xl does not do that for decoding speed reasons. The specification doesn't allow it. All coding tables need to be in final form.
bmicraft 3y ago
Safari supports jxl since version 17
jonsneyers 3y ago
There are no royalties to be paid on JPEG XL. Nobody but Cloudinary and Google is claiming to hold relevant patents, and Cloudinary and Google have provided a royalty free license. Of course the way the patent system works, anything less than 20 years old is theoretically risky. But so far, there is nobody claiming royalties need to be paid on JPEG XL, so it is similar to WebP in that regard.
- bombcar 3y ago
  "Patent issues" has become a (sometimes truthful) excuse for not doing something. When the big boys want to do something, they find a way to get it done, patents or no, especially if there's only "fear of patents" - see Apple and the whole watch fiasco.
  - mikae1 3y ago
    Patents was not the latest excuse I heard from Google. Their explanation was security concerns.
    - JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago
      Do you have a link? Or was it a private communication?
lonjil 3y ago
The Microsoft patent doesn't apply to JXL, and in any case, Microsoft has literally already affirmed that they will not use it to go after any open codec.
- bombcar 3y ago
  How exactly is that done? I assume even an offhand comment by an official (like CEO, etc) that is not immediately walked back would at least protect people from damages associated with willful infringement.

lifthrasiir 3y ago

> [...] other large companies that would be exposed to law suits related to these patents (Apple, Adobe, etc.) [...] Adobe included JPEG XL support to their products and also the DNG specification. So that argument is pretty much dead, no?

jillesvangurp 3y ago
Not that simple. Maybe they struck a deal with a few of the companies or they made a different risk calculation. And of course they have a pretty fierce patent portfolio themselves so there's the notion of them being able to retaliate in kind to some of these companies.
- lifthrasiir 3y ago
  I don't think that's true (see my other comment for what the patent is really about), but even when it is, Adobe's adoption means that JPEG XL is worth the supposed "risk". And Google does ship a lot of technologies that are clearly patent-encumbered. If the patent is the main concern, they could have answered so because there are enough people wondering about the patent status, but the Chrome team's main reason against JPEG XL was quite different.
izacus 3y ago
Adobe also has an order of magnitude lower number of installed software than Chrome or Firefox which makes patent fees much cheaper. And their software is actually paid for by users.
- spider-mario 3y ago
  DNG Converter (which includes JPEG XL compression) isn’t paid. You can get it here: https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter.html https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/adobe-dng-converter...
luma 3y ago
Adobe sells paid products and can carve out a license fee for that, like they do with all the other codecs and libraries they bundle. That's part of the price you are paying. Harder to do for users of Chrome.
- lifthrasiir 3y ago
  The same thing can be said with many patent-encumbered video codecs which Chrome does support nevertheless. That alone can't be a major deciding factor, especially given that the rate of JPEG XL adoption has been remarkably faster than any recent media format.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Is this not simply a risk vs reward calculation? Newer video codecs present a very notable bandwidth saving over old ones. JPEG XL presents minor benefits over WebP, AVIF, etc. So while the dangers are the same for both the calculation is different.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      Video = billions lower costs for Youtube.
- spider-mario 3y ago
  You can get Adobe DNG Converter for free and use it to convert your raw files to DNG compressed with JPEG XL. https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/camera-raw/digital-negative/jcr_content/root/content/flex/items/position/position-par/download_section/download-1/dng_converter_commandline.pdf https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/en/camera-raw/digit...

zokier 3y ago

> their lawyers pulled the emergency brakes Do you have source for that claim?

kasabali 3y ago
Probably this: https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/microsoft_ans_patent/ I think it would be much better for everyone involved and humanity if Mr. Duda himself got the patent in the first place instead of praying no one else will.
- mananaysiempre 3y ago
  Duda published his ideas, that’s supposed to be it.
- lonjil 3y ago
  Prior art makes patents invalid anyway.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    Absolutely. And nothing advances your career quite like getting your employer into a multi-year legal battle and spending a few million on legal fees, to make some images 20% smaller and 100% less compatible.
    - lonjil 3y ago
      Well, lots of things other than JXL use ANS. If someone starts trying to claim ANS, you'll have Apple, Disney, Facebook, and more, on your side :)
  - mort96 3y ago
    But that doesn't matter. If a patent is granted, choosing to infringe on it is risky, even if you believe you could make a solid argument that it's invalid given enough lawyer hours.

peppermint_gum 3y ago

>To fix this, you'd need to convince Google, and other large companies that would be exposed to law suits related to these patents (Apple, Adobe, etc.), that these patent holders are not going to insist on being compensated. Apple has implemented JPEG XL support in macOS and iOS. Adobe has also implemented support for JPEG XL in their products. Also, if patents were the reason Google removed JXL from Chrome, why would they make up technical reasons for doing so? Please don't present unsourced conspiracy theories as if they were confirmed facts.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
[flagged]
- lonjil 3y ago
  Mate, you're literally pulling something from your ass. Chrome engineers claim that they don't want JXL because it isn't good enough. Literally no one involved has said that it has anything to do with patents.
- Scaevolus 3y ago
  If you want a simple conspiracy theory, how about this: The person responsible for AVIF works on Chrome, and is responsible for choosing which codecs Chrome ships with. He obviously prefers his AVIF to a different team's JPEG-XL. It's a case of simple selfish bias.
- JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago
  Why not take Chrome's word for it: ---cut--- Helping the web to evolve is challenging, and it requires us to make difficult choices. We've also heard from our browser and device partners that every additional format adds costs (monetary or hardware), and we’re very much aware that these costs are borne by those outside of Google. When we evaluate new media formats, the first question we have to ask is whether the format works best for the web. With respect to new image formats such as JPEG XL, that means we have to look comprehensively at many factors: compression performance across a broad range of images; is the decoder fast, allowing for speedy rendering of smaller images; are there fast encoders, ideally with hardware support, that keep encoding costs reasonable for large users; can we optimize existing formats to meet any new use-cases, rather than adding support for an additional format; do other browsers and OSes support it? After weighing the data, we’ve decided to stop Chrome’s JPEG XL experiment and remove the code associated with the experiment. [...] From: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/WjCKcBw219k/m/xX-NnWtTBQAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/WjCKc...

JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago

That ANS patent supposedly relates to refining the coding tables based on symbols being decided. It is slower for decoding and Jpeg xl does not do that for decoding speed reasons. The specification doesn't allow it. All coding tables need to be in final form.

bmicraft 3y ago

Safari supports jxl since version 17

jonsneyers 3y ago

There are no royalties to be paid on JPEG XL. Nobody but Cloudinary and Google is claiming to hold relevant patents, and Cloudinary and Google have provided a royalty free license. Of course the way the patent system works, anything less than 20 years old is theoretically risky. But so far, there is nobody claiming royalties need to be paid on JPEG XL, so it is similar to WebP in that regard.

bombcar 3y ago
"Patent issues" has become a (sometimes truthful) excuse for not doing something. When the big boys want to do something, they find a way to get it done, patents or no, especially if there's only "fear of patents" - see Apple and the whole watch fiasco.
- mikae1 3y ago
  Patents was not the latest excuse I heard from Google. Their explanation was security concerns.
  - JyrkiAlakuijala 3y ago
    Do you have a link? Or was it a private communication?

lonjil 3y ago

The Microsoft patent doesn't apply to JXL, and in any case, Microsoft has literally already affirmed that they will not use it to go after any open codec.

bombcar 3y ago
How exactly is that done? I assume even an offhand comment by an official (like CEO, etc) that is not immediately walked back would at least protect people from damages associated with willful infringement.