Google is permanently ending support for JPEG XL in Chromium

Google has permanently discontinued support for the JPEG XL file format in Chromium. With the latest merge support has been removed from the open source browser project.

The turnaround in JPEG XL support started in October when it was announced that the codec would be phased out after a few months. The tech giant then gave the reason that “there is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL.” In addition, the image codec would not contain enough improvements over existing formats.

These reasonings came as a surprise to many involved; companies such as Adobe or Facebook would look at applications of the format, although JPEG XL would not have had a chance at all because it has never been used in practice. Therefore, users share on one forum page of Chromium all kinds of theories about why Google makes the decision that they think is incomprehensible.

JPEG XL is an image codec that can significantly reduce file size without much loss of quality. In addition, such files are backwards compatible, or existing JPEG files can be transcoded to the new format.