A PNG file that displays the quality of WebP technology

CNET is reporting today that Google is preparing to announce a new image format for the Web, which they call WebP, later today.

Google plans to announce the new WebP graphics format today along with its research that indicates its use could cut image file sizes by 40 percent compared to today's dominant JPEG file format. That translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP.

WebP is derived from WebM, another open-source technology developed by Google which is for videos. WebP is also open-source.

You can expect the first Web browser to get WebP support will be Google Chrome, but it should be interesting to see if any other Web browsers get on board the WebP train.

"When we took a bunch of images, recompressed them from their current lossy formats into WebP, we saw on average about 40 percent decrease in size, which is staggering," said Richard Rabbat, lead product manager on Google's "make the Web faster" effort. Shrinking images by that much is particularly important considering that, by Google's estimate, "65 percent of bytes on the Web are from images," he said.