By ByteBot
Google merged JPEG XL support back into Chromium last week using a new Rust-based decoder, reversing the company’s controversial 2022 decision to remove the format it declared “obsolete.” The commit landed January 8 and hit Hacker News today with 320 upvotes—developers are celebrating what amounts to a rare community victory over corporate browser politics.
Nothing says “not enough interest” quite like 1,000 stars on your removal bug tracker.
The 2022 “Obsolete” Declaration That Wasn’t
When Google ripped JPEG XL out of Chrome 110 in December 2022, the justification was blunt: “Experimental flags and code should not remain indefinitely… not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG XL.” The removal sparked one of Chromium’s most contentious threads in project history, drawing over 1,000 stars and hundreds of passionate comments from developers who accused Google of rigging tests to favor AVIF—a competing format Google controls through AOMedia.
The community didn’t buy it then, and history proved them right. Safari shipped JPEG XL support anyway, reaching about 17% of users. The PDF Association named it their “preferred solution” for HDR content. And developer surveys for Interop 2026—a cross-browser standardization effort—ranked JPEG XL among the top pain points. Turns out developers were interested. Google just wasn’t listening.
Rust Changes the Equation
The breakthrough came from an unexpected source: the community itself. Developers built jxl-rs, a pure Rust implementation of the JPEG XL decoder that solved the security objections Google and Mozilla had raised about the original C++ reference decoder. Mozilla had rejected the C++ version as adding “substantial attack surface” to Firefox. Google demanded a “performant and memory-safe” solution before reconsidering.
The Rust decoder delivered exactly that. Memory safety without runtime overhead, feature-complete with animation support, passing automated tests. In November 2025, Rick Byers, Chrome’s Architecture Tech Lead, publicly welcomed contributions for the Rust decoder. By January 8, the code was merged. It’s hard to claim a format is “obsolete” when your community builds the infrastructure you said was missing.
What JPEG XL Actually Delivers
The technical case for JPEG XL was always strong—Google’s 2022 dismissal just ignored it. The format compresses images 10-15% better than AVIF at high quality settings and 20-25% better than WebP, while encoding about three times faster than AVIF. It supports HDR content up to 32 bits per channel, handles images beyond 1 billion pixels, and can losslessly transcode existing JPEGs with 20% size reductions without re-encoding. That last feature alone makes it valuable for the millions of JPEG-based image libraries across the web.
The PDF Association’s endorsement matters here. When standards bodies looking to the next decade choose your format for HDR content, “not enough interest” starts sounding like corporate positioning rather than technical assessment. The format wars between JPEG XL and AVIF were never about technical merit—they were about which company controls the standard.
Where Things Stand Now
Safari users already have JPEG XL support. Chrome and Edge will get it once the Rust decoder ships to stable—no release date announced yet, and Google says it needs a “commitment to long-term maintenance” before enabling by default. Firefox has opt-in support in Nightly builds and will likely ship once the Rust implementation stabilizes further.
The Chromium merger covers roughly 65% of browser market share once it reaches stable release. Combined with Safari’s existing support, JPEG XL moves from “dead format” to “pending universal adoption” in about three years—no small feat for a standard Google tried to kill.
The Developer Advocacy Lesson
This story represents something unusual in browser development: a vendor reversal driven by community pressure, competitive dynamics, and technical problem-solving. Developers didn’t just complain about the 2022 removal—they built the Rust decoder Google said it needed, Safari proved the format worked in production, and Interop surveys quantified the demand. The combination removed every excuse.
That said, trust issues remain. Google called JPEG XL “obsolete” in 2022 when it clearly wasn’t, favoring their AVIF alternative instead. The reversal only came after Safari shipped support and community pressure mounted. Will they maintain it long-term, or kill it again in 2028? The format needs sustained commitment, not just a code merge.
For now, though, developers won. The format lives, Rust set a precedent for memory-safe browser codecs, and cross-browser standardization efforts proved they can work. That’s worth celebrating—cautiously.
