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.
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.
