The article claims that "Google wants control, and JPEG XL could take that away from them" however this is disingenuous. The JPEG XL format was co-authored by Google employees, and they have just as much say over the direction of that format as they do WebP.
The JPEG XL authors make claims about it's superiority over formats like AVIF, but there is no support or even timeline for hardware encode or decode on important platforms like mobile.
The JPEG XL authors make claims about it's superiority over formats like AVIF, but there is no support or even timeline for hardware encode or decode on important platforms like mobile.
By contrast, Qualcomm is adding support for AV1 encoding to Snapdragon X (https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/pcs-and-...) which could lead to efficient encoding of AVIF photos and animations.