Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0x_rs | Hacker News Reader

>instead of the entire industry that didn't adopt it?

Is this a good argument? Nobody is going to adopt something without being natively supported by browsers without ugly js hacks, and when it comes to browser standards it seems to me Google has more leverage than anybody else. Cloudinary has made a lot of posts about JPEG-XL, so you might say they're quite biased towards it, but it also seems to me there is some interest in it by multiple companies [0, 1]. I personally very much doubt webp would be anywhere today without the massive (arguably deceptive) campaigning and double standards it had.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XL#Industry_support_and_a...

1. https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=117805...

View on HN

Being supported by some browsers is useless. It needs to be supported by all the major browsers, as shown by webp.

Apple did not support JPEG XL, based on past history was unlikely to do so, and despite what you say about Google having the most leverage they have none on Apple. If Apple doesn't want something supported, no iOS browser will support it. And if no iOS browser supports a format, it is not going to be useful in production.

I do find it hilarious that all the people who complained about Chrome supporting webp then went on to complain about Chrome not supporting JPEG XL. They're both Google-created formats not widely supported by the ecosystem!

JPEG XL is not Google created. The problem here is that there's a conflict of interest, Google has its own image formats and they're being petty about competition.

JXL was partly derived from Google technologies although it went to ISO standardisation.

Ok so one is controlled by Google and one isn't, the idea that any argument over them was ridiculous seems weird given this salient difference.

Heh that makes it even worse because the people who decided to remove JPEG XL from Chrome claimed it was technically inferior :')

Of the people listed as the main authors of the JPEG XL spec on Wikipedia, I believe 2 out of 3 worked at Google.

What's the "conflict of interest" you're talking about? AVIF? How is that their own format when JPEG XL isn't?

If Apple, Mozilla and Microsoft wanted JPEG XL and committed to supporting it, I bet Chrome could be convinced to restore the support. But AFAIK those companies have made no such commitment, or even any kind of indication of intent. Why should we have another image format that gets only implemented in Chrome, not the wider web ecosystem? (Of course, they too are members of the foundation building AVIF. Oh my God, so many conflicts of interest!)

>Of the people listed as the main authors of the JPEG XL spec on Wikipedia, I believe 2 out of 3 worked at Google.

Google Research. Which is similar to Microsoft Research.

I don't know what distinction you're trying to draw there.

Mozilla is neutral on JPEG XL:

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/522#is...

>And if no iOS browser supports a format, it is not going to be useful in production.

graphics heavy sites often optimize for various platforms instead of serving to just one standard.

> I do find it hilarious that all the people who complained about Chrome supporting webp then went on to complain about Chrome not supporting JPEG XL.

They are different formats with different attributes, so it's reasonable to distinguish between them. JPEG XL is a general purpose image format. It's reasonable to want browsers to display it. WebP and AVIF are special-purpose formats, designed to leverage their corresponding video decoders, for delivery of ephemeral images to end-user devices. It's reasonable to object to limited formats that are manifestly crowding out general ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_XL

How is it Google created?

It was based on Google's submission, the majority of the authors are Google employees, and the majority of the commits to the reference implementation were written by Google employees. You mean other than that?

That's not to say they're the only contributors or should have all the credit. But it does make the "Google is trying to kill an open standard to push their own format" narrative here completely moronic.

Why should Google be the ones solely responsible for pushing forward file formats? Either you criticize everyone for their parts in not adopting it, or not at all. It seems silly to single out Google and Google alone when nobody else batted an eyelash to try and support the format.

The majority market share is for Google Chrome, directly and indirectly, thus they are the primary target, while Firefox & Safari will only come next.

> Nobody is going to adopt something without being natively supported by browsers without ugly js hacks

That's fair, but it is worth pointing out that <picture> tags support multiple source formats. I serve some logos and other important images as both .png and .webp. Adding additional lines for avif for jxl seem reasonable - especially if browsers are testing new formats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com