by Zakary Venturo

Created on: October 08, 2010

Patience on the Internet is not a virtue. Google has long been obsessed with how fast a web page loads and has been providing tools, like the FireFox plug in, Page Speed, to assist web masters in figuring out ways to optimize their sites for speed. Now Google has announced a new compression format for graphics, dubbed WebP, which provides an average 39% reduction in file sizes when compared to their original jpeg counterparts.

WebP is built on an algorithm which breaks up an image into 16 pixel block and tries to predict the colors of an adjacent 16 pixel block. If the algorithm is correct, there is no need to add additional data. The algorithm itself is derived from Google’s acquisition of On2 in order to obtain VP8 video codec. Like VP8, WebP has also been made open source.

Google hopes making WebP open source will encourage its adoption. Google has even gone step further, adding its code to WebKit, the web browser engine used by both Chrome and Safari. The question is whether Internet Explorer, FireFox, and even Opera, will follow.

An even bigger question is whether creative professionals make the switch. Currently the only conversion tool available runs strictly on on Linux. It is not highly likely this crowd will become entranced by the need to run the conversion at a command line. However, Google has a good relationship with Adobe and they produce the software, Photoshop and Illustrator, considered the industry standard for graphics.

All this means it is an uphill climb on whether a new file format, no matter how promising, can become adopted. Jpeg has been a standard for more than 20 years and has watched as other file formats meant to replace it have come and gone. Besides web browsers and creativity software, the camera industry is heavily devoted to the jpeg image format. Forget creative professionals, think of all those family and vacation photos being pushed online to social networks like Facebook.

While WebP might be intended to as a file format to make the web faster, there is a lot of interconnected familiarity with digital pictures already in existence. While Google points out 65% of web pages serve up images and photos, the world is already 100% prepared for using jpegs. It is not a question of whether a web page can be made faster with a new file format. It is a question of whether non technical, non creative professionals, will be able to download a picture and use it as a desktop background or put it inside a digital picture frame and set it on their desk at work.

Nobody likes waiting for a web page to load. The truth is, regardless of what picture format is being used on the web, the web will continue to get faster as providers continue to increase the speed of their networks. WebP, while definitely intellectually interesting, will not likely get the widespread support it needs before broadband makes the concept irrelevant.

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