Google Chrome users should expect to see a performance of the browser speeds up in loading times. What Google did is implementing a new compression, called Brotli.
Brotli was first unveiled in September 2014. But at that time, Google didn't provide any detail about it or when the upgrade would be available.
According to Google, Brotli compression method can reduces the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code between 20 and 26 percent more efficiently than its previous compression algorithm, Zopfli. Data compression is a process that minimizes data so that it takes up less space and is easier (faster) to transfer.
"At Google, we think that internet users' time is valuable," wrote the company in blog post announcing Brotli. "And that they shouldn't have to wait long for a web page to load."
Brotli in particular, aims mobile. With practically a "tweak" to the previous algorithm, Brotli should make browsing experience faster while using fewer resources.
Modern mobile devices, especially flagship ones, have high processing power and nevertheless, battery hungry. With their huge resources, the cost of of online mobile communication remains high. Google tries to minimize such use by using better compression method when people browse the web.
More compressed page should give a lower transfer fees, and this should also slightly reduce battery usage.
While better compression can give a faster loading page in overall, there is also a downside. Compression methods are relatively too slow to be done on the fly, or by the time the resources are requested from the server. For that reason, compression should be done ahead of time, and this limits the bandwidth saving advantages to static resources such as text.
Open-Sourcing Brotli
Google hails Brotli as "a new data format", and hopes that the new compression method will be adopted to other web browsers. For that aim, beside being applied to Chrome, Google also open-sourced Brotli. This means other technology companies can incorporate the algorithm in the near future.
To make use of Brotli, developers have to reprogram their servers to support the new compression algorithm. Google said that, for most servers, only minor modifications are required.
"We hope that this format will be supported by major browsers in the near future," said Zoltan Szabadka, a software engineer on Google’s compression team, wrote in September. Mozilla’s Patrick McManus previously said Firefox would eventually add supports for Brotli too.
The world's internet speed is indeed speeding up. But this is also for a reason that the web has more contents to show. Brotli is Google's way in making the process of waiting to load less painful for users. In October 2015, Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages, which is a way to present news articles in mobile search results and enables them to load more quickly.