Google's "WebP" 40% smaller than JPEG

Google has launched it new Image format known as WebP (pronounced as "weppy"), which it claims can cut the size of the web images by almost 40%.

The news came into the light this morning by CNET, to which the Google in itsblog entry described the technology. The basic motive of this open sourced technology Is to make web lighter and faster, which is Google's current mission. The more fast is the web the more is Google's Income generation.

WebP is also based on the "lossy" compression like JPEG, Google has applied techniques from VP8 Video intra-frame coding to image coding, before adding a container based on the resource interchange file format (RIFF).

VP8 encodes video key frames, WebP using predictive coding, which predicts the values in a block of pixels using the values in neighboring blocks, and then encodes only the difference between the actual value and the prediction. The difference is known as the residual, and the residuals typically contain many zeroes, which can be compressed more effectively, according to Google.

Google has already tested the format be re-encoding 1,000,000 existing web images, mostly JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs, and it saw a 39% reduction in an average file size. Though more advancement is yet to be made in the technology and on the other hand Google is also teaming up with other browser makers over the new concept.