Google has been developing WebP software for some time and has now introduced a new version into the latest Chrome beta. The company has been trying to speed the internet up with its yet to be fully supported web image format. Google said the updated version can allow browsers to display images up to 25% faster than traditional formats.

Not only is it designed to speed things up, but it also appears that Google is attempting to simplify things and aims to replace existing formats with its supposed superior one. While Google is sure WebP both can and should replace all of the major formats, it is yet to convince browser company's like Mozillla to move away from the long used JPEG format, even with support from Facebook and Netflix. While Mozilla is hesitant to jump on board to say the least, many outside developers tend to agree with Google in terms of WebP being a superior format to what is currently out there.

Generally speaking, most images on the web are either in the lossy JPEG, transparency supporting PNG or classic animated GIF formats. However, Google says that WebP will reduce file sizes greatly compared to JPEG and will also combine many of the benefits of JPEG and PNG into a single unified format. WebP can take advantage of small compressed file sizes like JPEGs, the transparency currently available with PNGs, animated graphics like GIFs and higher quality lossless options.

Google has already been replacing images with WebP throughout its services online, including thumbnails on YouTube and logos on Google Play. In a recent blog post, Husain Bengali, a WebP optimizer at Google, said "the rollouts within Google combined have raised our aggregate data transfer savings tally to tens of terabytes every day." Bengali went on to say that not only does this mean faster page load times for users, but its also means "fewer bytes counted against metered data plans."