Google Maps JPEG XL's Journey From Research Experiments to International Standard

Google has published a retrospective tracing JPEG XL from its roots in Guetzli and Brunsli—projects that optimized legacy JPEG—through PIK, an experimental codec merging their techniques. The final JPEG XL standard, now formalized as ISO/IEC 18181, incorporated PIK's decoding algorithms alongside Cloudinary's FUIF context trees. The chronology illustrates how open source research can consolidate into standardized formats, mirroring earlier transitions from GIF to PNG.