We have seen Google investing much time and money trying to revolutionize the Internet. In addition to having put on the market your browser, Chrome, which features many innovations that quickly become a standard in the industry, sponsors and provided the development of two new standards for video and image.

The WebM that everyone knows as the new video format to be standard on the Internet also has a brother, WebP, which promises to become the new standard for images that will be available on the Internet. This new development standard has been presented with some news.

The WebP promises to be a format that will allow Internet content to be delivered to users more quickly than ever, as much as what happens with the videos WebM. Its compression ratio is about 40% higher compared to the JPG format and in images of similar quality.

The way the compression is made, is based on the same methodology that is used in video compression codec V8. Through the analysis of blocks of neighboring pixels can provide the values and so do the encoding of the difference.

WebP uses predictive coding to encode an image, The Same Methodology used by the VP8 video compression codec to key frames in videos.

Predictive coding uses the values in neighbouring blocks of pixels to predict the values in the block, and then encodes only the difference (residual) Between the current values and the prediction.

The residuals contain 'Typically many zero values, Which Can Be compressed much more effectively.

In order to make this new format, Google has already invested in him and offered support in Chrome, so that everyone can try. Interestingly Opera just moved in the same direction and also provided support for WebP in your browser.

The news now appear settled primarily on improving the compression algorithm and the ability to compress different areas of the image differently. Another feature that is included allows the image can be used as it is being received on the computer, thus avoiding having to wait for the entire image to be codified. The latter function is already active in Chrome 12.

The residuals are then Transformed, quantized and entropy-coded as usual. Also WebP uses variable block sizes.

The adoption of this new format in the offices of Google have been done in a phased manner but consistent. Right now this format is already supported by Gmail and Picasa. Moreover, all images submitted via Instant Previews on Google searches are also being stored in the format WebP, thus reducing the space required to store them.

You can compare the quality of this new format in the gallery which is available at Google and understand better what the WebP brings. The image quality is the same, but its size will be reduced to values much lower. So we get access to content more quickly, but without thereby lose its quality.

After WebM Google invests heavily in an image format that besides being open can bring real improvements compared to the standards currently in use. Change always is being done to better ways and Google is leading this change!

Homepage: WebP