Google announces new photo format: WebP

October 1, 2010 By Laura Khalil

Google is pushing for the future of photo formatting to be done in WebP, leaving JPEG in the dust.

WebP (pronounced weppy) has been under development by Google and reduces file sizes by 40 percent compared to JPEGs. That means faster downloads from websites and less strain on networks.

Richard Rabbat, product manager at Google explains why they made the decision to develop WebP, “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.”

Google is working hard to make this a new standard and has been in discussions with browser developers to gather support. Not surprisingly, we can expect to see WebP support in Chrome in the next few weeks.

Showing 22 comments

Joshua at 8:22pm 9th October 2010 Samples please.
Jpuzzled at 1:28am 4th October 2010 I did not know that slow-loading of jpeg images had reached such crisis proportions. And here I would of thought that finding a viable alternative to Flash would have more beneficial impact on websites and networks. Hmmm...
1. Gary Blackerby at 3:02am 4th October 2010 There's a lot of truth there, Jpuzzled... Concentrate on the area of most significance... and it's vids! Google, for all it's power and dollars, will likely give way to the porn industry's R&D for the truly innovative solutions in image handeling and broadband optimization. It's always been that way... the market solution.
JackyHendrik at 12:43am 4th October 2010 Waiting to see this new format in action...
eskimo at 10:34pm 3rd October 2010 Richard Rabbat, cousin to the famous holywood star Roger Rabbit...
JoJo at 9:30pm 3rd October 2010 I wouldn't be surprised if one of Google's primary aims behind this new format is to allow it to far easily index the pictures than ever before by way of some internal meta-tagging or somesuch.
Bob Dolan at 3:35pm 3rd October 2010 will ebaums support it ?
Chicken at 3:06pm 3rd October 2010 Why don't we just increase bandwidth speeds in the United States? Give a more competitive market for the strain on our lack-luster oil dollar and boom the industry with better possibility...
karl at 2:05pm 3rd October 2010 all the yes-sayers above are obviously so stupid, i can't believe it...
1. Jim King at 8:01pm 3rd October 2010 Why stupid. You don't think 40% is significant, or you don't like Google?
andy at 1:45pm 3rd October 2010 yes the might have just called it .digitalpiss as well. same thing as.webP
slavco at 11:43am 3rd October 2010 this sounds great, but the name WebP is horrible, they should give anme like .wep .pweb .webi etc.
Kakynologyst at 10:40am 3rd October 2010 Cool, this will be great for webs!
Guest at 9:31am 3rd October 2010 Not a good news for these camera phone media cards companies. No need to buy an larger card now, I can store 40% more pics.
1. Anonymous at 1:05am 4th October 2010 0_o this is great news this means that their cards now hold 40% more pictures.
xyz at 7:53am 3rd October 2010 And I still am trying to convert my vinyl records to mp3s :)
Jessica Lambiase at 6:56am 3rd October 2010 Some doubts about it. Some doubts about Google. Some doubts about defeating of jpeg. Waiting to see this new format in action...
emmadw at 6:37am 3rd October 2010 And which graphics packages will support creating them?
1. Darryn Lowe at 5:36pm 6th October 2010 Apparently Pixelmator on the Mac will in its next version.
Jing Hoo at 6:35am 3rd October 2010 Oh wow, here goes Google agoin, out on its own thng. Its pretty clear Google will rule the world one day. www.complete-privacy.es.tc
@zzzzare at 3:38am 3rd October 2010 That is really great, 40% downsize. This will for sure have impact on webdesign.
Rio at 2:51am 3rd October 2010 kewl, is this new format can be viewed on my PC? What is the extension name for this image type .webp?