The Chrome team is cutting support for the superior JPEG-XL codec in its browser — even before they enabled it!
The decision was made in secret under the direction of a single person who has conflicts of interests, and promotes the inferior AVIF alternative.
The decision was made in secret under the direction of a single person who has conflicts of interests, and promotes the inferior AVIF alternative.
https://twitter.com/nathan_wasson/status/1588703909060698113
AVIF is based on VP10 codec, like a successor to WEBP which is based on the VP8 codec. Google owns & controls VP10, so has interests in promoting it instead of superior alternatives.
This means there'll be ~50% more energy used, and thus carbon, for internet bandwidth. 🙄
This means there'll be ~50% more energy used, and thus carbon, for internet bandwidth. 🙄
Most of our internal pipelines for data processing in #ML are based on JPEG-XL. For instance, the FFHQ dataset with "visually lossless" compression takes now 84Gb instead of 995Gb. Transfers faster, loads faster, trains faster.
In the browser too, seeing the same thing. We can do 1440x1440 preview JXL images vs 720x720 JPG with about similar size and better visual quality.
Cutting JXL support from Chrome, and sentencing the whole downstream ecosystem to that, is a huge profit-based mistake IMHO. 🤯
Cutting JXL support from Chrome, and sentencing the whole downstream ecosystem to that, is a huge profit-based mistake IMHO. 🤯
@nathan_wasson It'd be amazing if you could do a follow-up article on the conflicts of interest, as Google's response/excuse you got is clearly a smoke screen for the real decision.
The person who developed VP8-VP10 seems to be promoting an inferior solution based on his codec!
The person who developed VP8-VP10 seems to be promoting an inferior solution based on his codec!
In retrospect, it seems there's are two factors that allowed JPEG-XL to be railroaded like this:
1) Branding, it sounds too close to crappy JPG.
2) Adoption, downstream libraries aren't there.
(Like Ubuntu 22.04 default repository, or even built-in Pillow support. @jonsneyers)
1) Branding, it sounds too close to crappy JPG.
2) Adoption, downstream libraries aren't there.
(Like Ubuntu 22.04 default repository, or even built-in Pillow support. @jonsneyers)
That does not justify Google's dubious and conflicted decision that ruins the web, but it means it'll be a bit harder to drum up support to fight them on this issue...
To be fair, JPEG-XL is ~2 years younger than AVIF. The spec of AVIF was standardized in Feb 2019 and JPEG-XL's bitstream was frozen in Dec 2020.
This explains the lag in adoption, and gives Google the shady opportunity to sabotage the codec before it establishes itself. 😒
This explains the lag in adoption, and gives Google the shady opportunity to sabotage the codec before it establishes itself. 😒
Both AVIF and JPEG-XL are royalty free and safe from a patents perspective.
That battle has been won at least!
That battle has been won at least!
https://twitter.com/boulabiar/status/1588821280178200577
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