JPEG XL and Google's War Against It (2024) | Hacker News Reader

JPEG XL and Google's War Against It (2024)

vale.rocks

26 pointsnayuki9 comments

> GIF [...] and is limited to a palette of a meagre 256 colours

I am SO tired of this myth. It is 256 colors per frame, but frames are allowed to overlay each other, have transparency, allowing earlier frames to shine through, do so with no delay, and have their own palettes. Here is a fullcolor gif for your viewing pleasure: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/SmallFul.... More details: https://web.archive.org/web/20130330081050/http://phil.ipal....

I’ve tried to convince all my friends to switch off Chrome for years. It’s an impossible battle. I don’t understand.

Each new decoder represents an increase in attack surface which is why not all video/audio formats supported by ffmpeg are enabled in Chrome. This is despite Chrome having ffmpeg as a depency. [caveat: this was the status quo when I last checked a couple of years ago]

Same. It feels like intentionally installing and using spyware at this point.

The damage they do is much worse. They practically control the evolution of the web standards at this point, thanks to their market share. They also get to dictate the dominant standard and stifle competition in associated domains like image formats. What makes it so insidious is that this damage is practically invisible to the regular users, unlike the spyware-like behaviors it exhibits.

This isn't a good reason. Firefox also doesn't support JPEG-XL. Let's wait until there is a memory safe decoder.

This is a chicken and egg problem. What is Mozilla's incentive in spending any effort on JPEG XL if Chrome doesn't support it? There won't be any demand for it from content creators until the majority browser adopts it.

The only way to protect the web users' interests against Google's commercial interests is to dethrone Chrome - no matter how farfetched that sounds. It's such a shame that the world managed to paint itself into a corner again inspite of the bitter experience with the earlier browser wars.

Mozilla has stated that they will support it as soon as a memory safe decoder is available. If Chrome doesn't support it then, it's reasonable to have this discussion.

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