Image‑format governance as platform power

Platform vendors’ choices about which image formats to support (or block) on default browsers and operating systems function as a form of infrastructure governance, shaping performance, energy use, intellectual‑property exposure, and which technologies gain adoption. Restorations or removals (Chrome reinstating JPEG‑XL via a Rust decoder) reveal that codec support is both a technical and political decision that affects web ecology. — If browser vendors continue to gate format support, policy debates over digital openness, data‑efficiency, and national digital sovereignty will need to include codec adoption as a lever of platform power.