Google to do away with JPEG?

[chris-p]

Google unveiled a new image format today called WebP that it hopes will make the web faster by cutting files sizes of images without affecting quality. According to a blog post they published earlier today, photos and images account for 65% of the bytes transmitted by websites. In their tests done using 1 million randomly selected images from the web, re-encoding images as WebP resulted in an average file size reduction of 39%. Here’s a gallery with image and file size comparisons.

[AndyStevens]

An interesting read and concept. But will it ever really take off? Other file formats have come and gone (and some still linger like JPG2000) but JPEG remains king. After all, it was developed by the Joint Photographers Expert Group - I belong to a similar group in my industry (design and publishing) and getting changes in format 'approved' is a massive uphill struggle that takes years.

Good in thoery, but would it really get adopted considering all browsers would have to be re-coded to accept the new format?

[KeithT]

An old Governor of mine used to have the policy that if it moves, oil it. But I personally don't think the Jpeg format needs any oiling and is fine as it is for web use. I hate Google anyway and have banned them and their toolbars from my computer (unless there is something covert about them that I don't understand). There are better search engines around these days anyway in my opinion. I think a lot of people have realised this and Google are struggling a bit to keep their top of the tree spot even though they have 63.5 % share of the search market. Why else would they tinker with something that works? Google are obviously trying to get web designers on their side. I hope the Jpeg format will be the choice of Microsoft, web designers, and other search engines for many years to come.

[Stormsong]

There's an old adage that says: if it aint broke, don't fix it . . . . sounds like reinventing the wheel to me. I've only just got used to downsizing images for web purposes using pixel ratios instead of megabyte size (a bit of a conundrum as I am in print publishing where higher megabytes and dpi are used as standard) and I am a bit of a technophobe, so only time will tell. But for now, JPEG is the universal, accepted norm. Not only will all browers have to be changed to implement the WebP system, but so will all the myriad image processing software that is available. Or have I got it wrong? Does google intend to do it for free on 100 billion plus web pages? I doubt it - they never do anything for free!