From reading that, "gave up" seems to mean "deliberately killed it so their own WebP2 wouldn't have competition." Behold the monopoly at the apex of its power.
The really weird part is that both webp and jxl developments were largely funded by Google so its not Google killing a competitors format over their own but someone in one part of Google killing the format someone elsewhere in Google developed over their pet favorite.
There's no form of cloak-and-dagger BS more vicious than internecine BS.
PNG went through that when Microsoft kept throwing incomplete and buggy support for it in IE. Hopefully something will come along to buck Chrome's monopoly and JPEG-XL will have its chance.
On the other hand, more and more software are adding support for JPEG XL. Photoshop just added it in the latest patch (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/whats-new/2025-6.htm...), Apple has included it in the iPhone 16, it is easily available on Windows (https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mzprth5c0tb?hl=en-US&gl=U...), most major Linux distros already support it...
It is only a matter of time until the Chrome team has to reverse their decision.
Tell that to Google. They gave up on XL in Chrome[1] and essentially killed its adoption.
[1] https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40168998#comment85