What is WebP? Why Should You Use It?
In simple terms, the WebP (Web Picture) file format, developed by Google, aims at creating web images in smaller file sizes, and with better looking image quality, which helps to make the loading of webpages, faster. WebP improves the end-user's experience on a website, and can contribute to lowering the bounce-rate of an image-laden webpage.The image example here, is 106KB in WebP filetype, and 451KB in PNG filetype.
WebP has been around a while; first making headlines in a 2010 Google press conference. But, like any new technology, it had some initial rough patches. WebP can be used on a large variety of photographic, translucent and graphical images found on the web, and typically achieves an average of thirty percent (30%) smaller file size than JPG/JPEG, without a loss of image quality (see Comparative Study) and results in file sizes of only about a quarter of the size needed to represent the same as PNG files, including transparency/translucence support.
Google Chrome, Firefox[v.24+ as of January 2020], Opera, and Safari all now natively support WebP. Microsoft Edge supports WebP through a platform extension (installed by default). Since versions of Microsoft Edge released after January 2020 are based on the Chromium browser, WebP support is built-in without the need of platform extensions. If you are not running a new version of Microsoft Edge, it is time to upgrade.