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With all the fuss about WEBP and how cool it is, I'm still getting JPEG thumbnail images in image search on google.com in year 2016, even though Chrome browser tells in HTTP header it accepts webp images: accept:image/webp,image/,/*;q=0.8

Why is that so?

metalim
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1 Answers1

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Answering myself.

It may have reason "just not adopted yet", although it may as well be "not worth adopting", because of the following: WEBP gives better overall quality, but image distortions are different on low quality encoder settings, when compared to classical JPEG:

  • JPEG gives uniform distortions all over the picture, on hard edges, soft edges and soft gradients
  • while WEBP handles soft gradients and hard edges better than JPEG, it gives more distortions on the soft-edges. Because of that, image looks deformed.

Example: moon in the following image: http://xooyoozoo.github.io/yolo-octo-bugfixes/#pont-de-quebec-at-night&jpg=s&webp=s

As a side note: WEBP is used for video thumbnails on YouTube, but given the source is video, WEBP is more acceptable in this scenario, than encoding thumbnails for JPEG images.

metalim
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