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Opera embraces Google's open source JPEG killer
- janjan 16y agoIt might be a stupid question, but: Is there an example of a hyped "whatever killer" that actually killed "whatever"? I have the feeling that all those Google, Facebook, Microsoft, iPad/iPad/iPhone killer that sensationalist journalists tend to write about are forgotten after half a year or so.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoWhen did all this whatever-Killer stuff start anyway? I'm not sure I've heard it in any other context than Apple's portable products e.g. iMac-killer, Wii-Killer, netbook-killer, Windows-killer, IE-killer, Ubuntu-killer, x86-killer or whatever don't seem to ring true to me even if they've dominated mindshare (in various markets, for various lengths of time). In general, why would you want to "kill" them, rather than say outsell them or offer better specs at a lower price? Seems very wierd and macho. Do any actual company representatives use this language, or is it just gadget blogs? This is the oldest entry a quick google returns, was he copying an earlier snowclone? "Creative unveils potential iPod killer" http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2002/10/1152.ars http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2002/10/1152.ars To add further confusion, I wouldn't assume that a Register headline to be without snark, and similarly I've lately seen iPad-killer used as a sarcastic insult, with the implicit assumption that it will fail.
- tedunangst 16y agoSprint most definitely marketed the Instinct as an "iPhone killer", those were the words that appeared in the commercial. ARM chips are sometimes referred to as x86 killers. Outselling implies that you are simply different. Killing implies that you have redefined the market by your awesomeness.
- pavlov 16y ago"X killer" goes as far back as the PC revolution, at least. Google finds examples of Digital Research's GEM window environment being hailed as the Mac killer. This was back in 1985. Searching for "IBM killer" finds references to the Digital VAX 9000, a failed minicomputer model that tried to beat IBM mainframes at their game.
- blub 16y agoFrom what I understand, X-killer is just another vapid advertising expression. So far I haven't seen any X-killer kill.
- perlgeek 16y agoI'm sure somebody called Facebook a Myspace-killer at some point. But I'm not sure if facebook actually killed myspace, or if it is committing suicide.
- _delirium 16y agoPNG was supposed to be the "GIF killer", and sort of succeeded, though pretty slowly.
- atacrawl 16y agoEvery time I see a headline like that, I can safely assume that the product or service to be killed will not only survive, but thrive.
- ootachi 16y agoI'm pretty sure IE was hyped as a Netscape killer... which is what it ultimately, sadly, did.
- arkitaip 16y agoDirekt link to relevant specs http://code.google.com/speed/webp/ http://code.google.com/speed/webp/ http://code.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container.html http://code.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container.html
- wladimir 16y agoToo bad alpha channel support is not part of the WebP spec yet (although it's promised). That would have the potential to truly make it a JPEG killer. Currently, PNG24 is the only (browser supported) image format that supports transparency, but the files can be huge. The only advantage over JPEG currently is that the files are somewhat smaller for the same quality. Yes, that's nice, but not enough to displace an heavily ingrained format with 20 years of use.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoIt seems relevant that Opera is deploying it in order to support their "Turbo" mode, where smaller files is a much stronger positive, and interoperability means very little. Interestingly, when Google first announced WebP, they used benchmarks to demonstrate its worth that suited the "Turbo" case perfectly. Everyone was confused why you'd test a format by re-compressing already lossy files. I'm assuming the other shoe will drop at some point and Google will start to transparently replace transient image files served by their services (e.g. Image Search or Picasas thumbnails, maybe even map tiles) as long as your browser supports WebP. Like Opera Turbo, mobile uses probably need this more than desktop in most of the world. And of course they already ship the code for WebM, which probably helps somewhat. The two formats may very slightly re-inforce each other's use.
- underwater 16y ago8 bit PNG supports alpha transparency. It's just Adobe have chosen not to implement it in Photoshop. See here http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/ http://blogs.sitepoint.com/png8-the-clear-winner/.
- nikcub 16y agoJPEG doesn't have to die for WebP to be a success, and it probably won't
- DarkShikari 16y agoAdvantages: Theoretically better compression than JPEG (but ... so was JPEG-2000). Disadvantages: The encoder actually loses to JPEG in many tests and almost everything it encodes looks like a blurry mess. No support for any color format besides 4:2:0. Almost no support in image editing applications. An order of magnitude slower than JPEG. Somehow I don't think this is much of a "JPEG killer". Its technology is 10 years out of date, entirely copy-pasted from H.264, and its featureset isn't even close to equalling JPEG's, let alone adding new features that people wanted.
- wladimir 16y agoCompression is slower. But it isn't entirely clear to me whether decompression is slower than JPEG too. That's the thing that matters. I cannot find any comparison, but that's because WEBP is a very bad name for searching on google: it gets shortened to 'web'.
- DarkShikari 16y agoDecompression is dramatically slower due to VP8's arithmetic coding.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoTry +WEBP - The + tells Google to ignore what it thinks and just listen to you, the user, dammit.
- benmccann 16y agoYes, or put it in quotes.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoAdding this way after the discssion in case it appears in future searches - the quotes don't really help with words that can be split into other words. My great-grandfather's surname is Aland. I did some searching on him recently - a search for "Aland" also returns results for "Al and" and "a land", neither of which are relevant. Using the + prevents that.
- aidenn0 16y agoWhat ever happend to JPEG-2000?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]