Google haven’t explicitly decided to block adoption of JPEG XL. They removed an incomplete implementation from Chromium which had never been shipped, because it was a maintenance burden and they weren’t ready to commit to supporting it. That’s quite a different thing. It may indicate a broader strategic direction, but it doesn’t necessarily.
The called it technically inferior based on opinions. They didn't do a thorough technical review, and why would they, they have webp. This was absolutely a strategical thing, it's naive to think it isn't.
Yeah, I'm quite hopeful that this is one where the developer backlash will cause a U-turn. I suspect it was seen as something that most people didn't care about, and now that it's clear that they do then likely something will be done about. I can't see any reason why Google would be strongly against it's inclusion.
That charitable interpretation would have been okay unless the Chrome team (yes, "Google" is not a single entity here) tried to publish a faulty benchmark [1] that has been thoroughly criticized [2] which never has been answered so far.
