WebP (pronounced "weppy") is animage file format that provides both lossy compression and lossless compression, derived from the image coding format VP8. It is a format developed after Google purchased On2 Technologies and released under BSD licensing terms.
WebP is a new image technology launched by Google. It can compress web pages effectively without affecting the compatibility of image formats and the actual clarity, thus speeding up the
download speed of the whole web page.
Since 65% of the data transmitted on the
Internet are pictures, WebP is developed for the purpose of reducing the amount
of data and accelerating network transmission. To improve JPEG's image
compression technology, they used a VP8-based image compressor (which was open
source in May 2010), a predictive coding technology, and a very lightweight
container based on RIFF. This container only adds 20 bytes to each image, but
allows the image authors to save the metadata they want to store.
Like JPEG, WebP is a lossy compression
using predictive coding technology. But Google says the main advantage of this
format is efficiency. They found that "with the same quality, the volume
of WebP image is 40% smaller than that of JPEG image.
At present, Google releases WebP file
decoder (libvpx) and command line tool (webpconv) for conversion between JPEG
format and WebP format, but the system support is limited to Linux for the time
being, and the Windows version will be released later.
The WebP team is also developing WebKit
kernel patches to provide native support for WebP formats in Google Chrome
browsers.
One drawback is that the encoding time of
WebP image is "eight times longer than that of JPEG image".
Analysts believe that although WebP format
has not been widely supported by various hardware and software as JPEG format,
Google's advantage in promoting this format is Chrome browser. The market share
of the browser developed by Google has reached more than 10%.
