... and I want to add that there's no need to assume nepotism.
If you get code merged into something like Chrome, and it's big and goes unused for a few years, at some point some security-minded person will come along and argue that your code is an unused attack surface and should be removed again.
> ... and I want to add that there's no need to assume nepotism.
Sure, and while this is true:
> If you get code merged into something like Chrome, and it's big and goes unused for a few years [it's likely to get removed.]
it's also true that Google could have pushed JPEG XL instead of pushing WebP, which would have massively increased the usage stats of the JPEG XL code and saved it from removal. But (for whatever reason) Google decided to set things up to push folks to use WebP at every turn, and here we are.
If you get code merged into something like Chrome, and it's big and goes unused for a few years, at some point some security-minded person will come along and argue that your code is an unused attack surface and should be removed again.