Google’s New Image Format “WebP”, plans to kill JPEG

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

In its continuing attempts to make the web faster, Google is trimming down the size of image files, which make up about 65% of the bytes on the web. Google announced that it is releasing a developer preview of a new image format WebP.

An alternative to the JPEG format, which is typically used today for web pictures and images, WebP should "significantly" reduce the byte size of images, Google promises.

In the blog post by Richard Rabbat, Product Manager -

Most of the common image formats on the web today were established over a decade ago and are based on technology from around that time. Some engineers at Google decided to figure out if there was a way to further compress lossy images like JPEG to make them load faster, while still preserving quality and resolution. As part of this effort, we are releasing a developer preview of a new image format, WebP, that promises to significantly reduce the byte size of photos on the web, allowing web sites to load faster than before.

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