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 entirely 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.