WebP lets users trade off image quality for file size, just like the JPEG. But unlike JPEG, it's not built into every web browser, camera, image-editing program and operating system in existence.
WebP, however, translates to faster file transfers and lower network burden if Google can convince people to adopt WebP. Shrinking images is particularly important considering because almost two-thirds of bytes on the web are from images.
Google plans to release a utility to convert graphics into WebP images.
WebP will eventually have support built into Google's Chrome browser. It's derived from Google's open-source technology for encoding and decoding video.