>The issue was lack of adoption - it never took hold due to Apple not adopting it in their ecosystem
It's not just Apple, webp files can't even be opened by Photoshop. You're basically making proprietary Chrome image files if you actually use that format.
Ehh... Firefox can open them just fine, as can GIMP, as can (apparently) my OS's image thumbnailer. (Though oddly enough not my OS's image viewer.) Support isn't universal, but it's certainly not a proprietary Chrome format.
Almost every computing app in the world supports JPG,PNG and GIF. Together we could only name 3 apps that can open webp and only one of those is an editor.
Shaking my head as to why this format has any support at all.
It's not just Apple, webp files can't even be opened by Photoshop. You're basically making proprietary Chrome image files if you actually use that format.