The reply by the Chromium engineer (from Google? - I'm not sure) to a long thread of people from several companies quantifying the benefits of JPEG XL and requesting that it be supported is just sad:
> Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback regarding JPEG XL. We will be removing the JPEG XL code and flag from Chromium for the following reasons:
> - Experimental flags and code should not remain indefinitely
> - There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL
> - The new image format does not bring sufficient increm
ental benefits over > existing formats to warrant enabling it by default
> - By removing the flag and the code in M110, it reduces the maintenance burden and allows us to focus on improving existing formats in Chrome
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If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I would imagine the people involved here are desperate to put 'Removed unused code and removed maintenance burden by X%' in there performance reviews for this year
> Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback regarding JPEG XL. We will be removing the JPEG XL code and flag from Chromium for the following reasons:
> - Experimental flags and code should not remain indefinitely
> - There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL > - The new image format does not bring sufficient increm ental benefits over > existing formats to warrant enabling it by default
> - By removing the flag and the code in M110, it reduces the maintenance burden and allows us to focus on improving existing formats in Chrome
---
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I would imagine the people involved here are desperate to put 'Removed unused code and removed maintenance burden by X%' in there performance reviews for this year