WebP is Google's new, leaner image format

Google's unleashed a new image format -- WebP -- and the images? Well, they're about 40 percent smaller than JPEGs. Good news for space savers, to be sure, but if we know anything about 'the world' it's that the best format doesn't always win, and sometimes, just getting there first is enough. WebP has just been released as a developer preview. Like JPEG, WebP's lossy compression gives you the option to choose between file size and quality. The drawback? WebP files take much longer to encode -- apparently about eight times as long. Hit up the source to check out more examples like the one you see above.