Google has released a new image compression format called WebP (pronounced “weppy”). It is for photographic style images (like JPG) and also lossy (like JPG). Their example gallery has side by side comparisons where the WebP version is equal to in quality or better with smaller size. The download they offer though, has strangely different results… I’ve heard some murmors that the quality of WebP is worse, but also like JPG, there are quality settings so I’m not sure if that kind of blanket statement can be made.
Since no browser supports the format yet, you can use a “PNG wrapper” (file name is ___.png) so browsers will display them. You have to use a super nerdy Linux command-line tool to convert images. The converter takes JPGs as input, which is funny that this “better that JPGs” tool needs JPGs to work. Although I realize this is about small compressed images moreso than large high quality images.
I can’t see this format being used much at all until better tools are made to create images in this format.