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Google's latest data-squeezing algorithm is coming to Chrome
Google is no Silicon Valley startup, but it's just as intent on creating compression algorithms as the fictional "Pied Piper." The search giant is about to unleash its latest algorithm, called "Brotli," onto the Chrome browser. The software compression team first revealed the algorithm in September, saying that it was 20 to 26 percent more efficient than Zopfli, an algorithm it launched only three years before. Google says that Brotli is a "whole new data format" that squeezes in more data than other compression formats, while decompressing at comparable speeds.
Google's Zopfli compression algorithm aims to speed up the web
Google's latest attempt to squeeze data into increasingly smaller and smaller spaces comes with a rather silly sounding name inspired by Swiss bread. Zopfli is a compression algorithm that Mountain View claims can create files between three and eight percent smaller than Zlib. Of course, the trade off is that it requires between two and three times as much CPU time to finish shoving everything into a neat little package. Obviously this isn't an ideal solution for on-the-fly compression. However, decompression speeds are unchanged and don't require a special library to unpack. The most obvious use of the technology will be in the mobile space where static website elements an be compressed once and transferred frequently. That would mean quicker load times, less battery drain and, perhaps most importantly in this era of capped data plans, less bandwidth usage. For a few more details check out the source link.
