There’s an interesting discussion going on Think Vitamin about WebP. Head over to the comments and read some really good points being made.
WebP is an attempt to solve one part of the speed aspect of images (it does nothing for latency, something that’s usually a bigger problem than file sizes). In this attempt it totally drops the ball on everything else though, which is a horrible tradeoff. Now if Google actually addressed these issues and added ICC v2, v4, alpha layers and metadatasupport it would be very interesting and I’m sure Mozilla would agree, but right now they’re taking the sane and logic stance. Adding an obviously unfinished image format to Firefox makes no sense.
— Tozz Erik Johansson in the Comments
I agree that the web should move forward. But moving forward at any cost is plain stupid. At least some time for reflection should be given, so people can make informed decisions. Yes, the W3C is slow, but I have the feeling that other people are trying to move way too fast.