Technology for WebP

WebP is a derivative of the development of WebM, the royalty-free video format.And the image compression algorithm of WebP is based on VP8, the video compression format contained by WebM.

Because VP8 is a lossy compression algorithm, however, a new algorithm was needed to develop a new image format replacing PNG of lossless compression.

To meet this need, Google software engineer Jyrki Alakuijala developed a new and improved lossless compression format (which is 25-30% more effective than PNG) using a variety of advanced technologies and applied it to WebP.

Thanks to the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) container, WebP is a single format but can apply several technologies to the multiple frames of an image individually.

WebP also supports animation as GIF does. And therefore the WebP format is receiving wide attention as a next-generation image format replacing GIF, JPG, and PNG.