Continuing its drive to enable a faster web experience for the users, Google has launched a new image format called WebP. The new format reduces the byte size of the photos thus allowing them to load faster on the web and increasing the speed of a page.

As proposed by Google, WebP will compress the lossy images (JPEG), which are primarily found on web pages, without affecting the resolution and quality. According to Google, WebP can reduce the photos’ sizes up to 40 percent.

Google has also set up a site for users to make comparisons between the sizes and load time JPEG and WebP images. It has also provided a conversion tool using which JPEG photo files can be converted into new format. The format is currently not supported by other web browsers and softwares that are used for JPEG.

WebP also has a slight relation with SEO as Google also counts page speed as one of the ranking factors.

Google also plans to make it compatible with Chrome soon. What is to be seen now is that how fairly does it get adopt.