Google Appears To Be Working On A Lossy Image Format For The Web

What defines a good user experience for websites varies, but one of the key factors in determining a good website is how fast it loads. This is because a website that takes several seconds longer than a competitor means that users would much prefer going to the one that can load faster, right?

This means that when designing a website, developers have to take into account things like image format and size, and Google could be working on something on that front. It has been discovered that Google could be working on a new lossy image format for the web called “Pik”. This isn’t the first time that Google has attempted something similar, as in the past the company had launched another lossy image format called WebP.

It is unclear as to how exactly Pik will differ from WebP, but interestingly enough despite the fact that the Pik development is being hosted on the official Google GitHub account, the readme notes says that this is not an official Google product. Perhaps it could be developed by one of Google’s engineers in their own spare time and thus it isn’t official yet, so it remains to be seen what exactly Google is planning for it.

The format is currently in the initial research stage, but for those interested you can head on over to Google’s GitHub for the details.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Google