FSF Slams Google Over Dropping JPEG-XL In Chrome

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FSF Slams Google Over Dropping JPEG-XL In Chrome

Last October Google engineers decided they would deprecate JPEG-XL support in Chrome over some debated rationale for the move. Even amid the community uproar they went ahead to drop the JPEG-XL support. The Free Software Foundation has finally commented on the matter...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FSF-Slams-Google-JPEG-XL

[avis]

Google's issue tracker ticket.
Previous very long discussion here on Phoronix.

FSF won't change Google's mind. That's rending the air, as the company basically owns Chromium and dictates what features go in or go out.

Not all Open Source is created equal. Google Chrome is a prime example of that.

[OneTimeShot]

I think all of the JPEG-XL proponents need to establish that Google didn't remove it for legal reasons... I don't think Google have much financial interest in image formats one way or another, and from a perspective of code maintenance JPEG-XL isn't a big thing is a massive browser code base.

So, my assumption is still a patent problem on JPEG-XL. Nothing else really makes sense to me - even if Google is now as evil as the rest of them...

[davidbepo]

not that i defend google removing it, but wtf is wrong with AVIF or WebP?
how does google control a royalty free open source standard?

[avis]

not that i defend google removing it, but wtf is wrong with AVIF or WebP?
how does google control a royalty free open source standard?

• Max image size is limited to 4K (3840x2160) in AVIF, which is a deal breaker to me. You can tile images, but seams are visible at the edges, which makes this unusable. JPEG XL supports image sizes of up to 1,073,741,823x1,073,741,824. You won’t run out of image space anytime soon.
• JXL offers lossless recompression of JPEG images. This is important for compatibility, as you can re-encode JPEG images into JXL for a 30% reduction in file size for free. AVIF has no such feature.
• JXL has a maximum of 32 bits per channel. AVIF supports up to 10.
• JXL is more resilient to generation loss.⁵
• JXL supports progressive decoding, which is essential in web delivery, IMO. AVIF has no such feature.
• AVIF is notoriously based on the AV1 video encoder. That makes it far superior for animated image sequences, outperforming JXL in this department by a wide margin. However, JXL also supports this feature.
• AVIF is supported in most major browsers. This includes Chrome (and derivatives) and Firefox (and forks). JXL is supported by almost nobody right now. Only Thorium, Pale Moon, LibreWolf, Waterfox, Basilisk and Firefox Nightly incorporate it. Most of these are community-maintained forks of Firefox. That is a big downside for adoption, as I already ranted about in this post.
• Both formats support transparency and wide gamut (HDR).

Source.

[Scias]

not that i defend google removing it, but wtf is wrong with AVIF or WebP?
how does google control a royalty free open source standard?

Nothing is really wrong with them but JXL just outperforms (ie: smaller size for the same quality) both in most cases, also supports progressive decoding and the best is that you can turn existing JPEGs into JXL without losing quality while still getting the hefty file size reduction benefit.

For most cases it's just the better format and there's no technical nor licensing reason not to support JXL...

[luno]

it is funny that Google co-created JPEG-XL, so it is just that AVIF people have more influence over Chrome development, they might add features of JPEG-XL to next version of AVIF

[cl333r]

Finally someone with balls told it like it is. Thanks FSF.

[archkde]

Nothing is really wrong with them but JXL just outperforms (ie: smaller size for the same quality) both in most cases, also supports progressive decoding and the best is that you can turn existing JPEGs into JXL without losing quality while still getting the hefty file size reduction benefit.

For most cases it's just the better format and there's no technical nor licensing reason not to support JXL...

While I agree that JPEG XL is a very good image format, and in general much better than WebP or AVIF, it's not true that there is no technical reason not to support it. Adding support for a new image format is always a bit of a chicken-egg problem, and adding a new decoding library is always a risk (due to larger attack surface and possible technical debt). Google may have judged that risk to be lower in the case of WebP and AVIF, because they already need to ship VP8, VP9 (I don't remember which one WebP is based on) and AV1 decoders for videos, since there the benefit of better codecs is larger than for images.

[skeevy420]

I think all of the JPEG-XL proponents need to establish that Google didn't remove it for legal reasons... I don't think Google have much financial interest in image formats one way or another, and from a perspective of code maintenance JPEG-XL isn't a big thing is a massive browser code base.

So, my assumption is still a patent problem on JPEG-XL. Nothing else really makes sense to me - even if Google is now as evil as the rest of them...

It's none of that. Ask yourself, "What are Google's biggest sources of income?"

The answers I'm looking for are YouTube and Advertising.

Forcing AVIF will make it easier to get screencaps and clips to make memes from internet videos that use the AV1 codec. Videos, memes, and clips are Google's bread and butter. They're also the bread and butter of social media. AVIF will make more indirect money than JPEG-XL.

avis

The technical reasons don't matter. We all know that JPEG-XL is better than AVIF in practically every metric aside from clips. The JPEG-XL problem is that it's less profitable since it can't be as easily tied into their other services and offerings like AVIF can. When making a clip from a video, there would always a lag or delay when going from AV1 to JPEG-XL that wouldn't be there when going from AV1 to AVIF. That lag or delay would annoy mobile users. Even if AVIF is the worse format overall, not having video to clip processing time will it seem better to dumb and impatient people.