Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web
Wait, so Google took a bunch of JPGs, re-compressed them with a lossy format, and claims to have gotten them 40% smaller with no loss in quality. Either the lossyness in the format is <i>entirely</i> in aspects of the image that the JPG compression already removed and they're just better at compressing the residue (possible, but I am skeptical), or else the image is altered, but in a way that Google claims is subjectively a sidegrade in quality. I'm not putting much faith in their quality claims until I see side-by-side comparisons of a JPG and WebP compression of the same TIFF (or other uncompressed) image at the same compression ratio. A double-blind study is probably too much to ask, but it would be nice.