However, that's missing the point: lz4's decompressor is simultaneously simple and also the fastest thing aroud, at least at the moment.
In fact, it is so fast, it can be used to accelerate local data transfers over "slow" links like bonded 10GBit ethernet and arrays of PCIe SSD's.
The proprietary LzTurbo [0] and free Lizard [1] both claim to be faster at decompression while having better compression ratios.
I think the ratio of CPU cycles to i/o bandwidth is what really matters. Presumably the optimal tradeoff between CPU throughout and compression ratios depends on that and varies over time.
For example, block-level filesystem compression (what lz4 is used for with zfs) has been valuable for filesystems essentially forever.
There's always been a need for very high throughput on the local filesystem.
What does amaze me a little, is the fact that the rather more complex Huffman algorithm was published and implemented decades before LZ.
The core idea of LZ, however, has been known for centuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iteration_mark