Chrome explains the reason for abandoning JPEG-XL image format: little user interest

Yesterday, the media reported that Chrome plans to abandon the JPEG-XL image format, which it had vigorously defended, and now a Google engineer has explained the rationale for abandoning the format.

The engineer said that the JPEG-XL image format does not bring enough incremental advantages over the existing format to justify enabling it by default.

Also, the current user and development environment is not interested in the image format, and there is not enough of an ecosystem to continue supporting JPEG-XL experiments.

In addition, by removing JPEG-XL-related code, it is able to reduce Chrome's maintenance burden, allowing developers to focus more on improving other formats that are currently supported by the browser.

It is also worth mentioning that Google has now given up on launching WebP 2 as an image format, and is instead using it only as an experiment.

From this point of view, Chrome will subsequently focus on the implementation of the existing WebP and AVIF two formats.