Google has announced it will roll out a new compression algorithm to its Chrome browser, boosting speeds by up to 26 per cent.
Called Brotli, the technology will compress data, including web font compression and other intensive elements of a web page commonly sent to and from pages, to make them load faster. It replaces the previous Zopfli algorithm Google was using to cut down the volume of traffic throughput, which was released two years ago.
Google explained on its blog that the compression engine will have two other benefits - reducing data transfer fees if not using an unlimited broadband plan and cutting battery usage when using a laptop to access web pages - which will be welcomed in a world where hybrids are increasingly becoming the norm, rather than high-powered machines.
Google explained: "[Brotli] compresses slightly more densely than LZMA and bzip2 on the Canterbury corpus. The higher data density is achieved by a 2nd order context modeling, re-use of entropy codes, larger memory window of past data and joint distribution codes."
Following the success of open-source algorithm Zopfli, the technology was adopted by a number of other companies to compress data traffic, including PNG optimisers and preprocessing web content engines. Now, Google is hoping the same will happen with Brotli.
Zoltan Szabadka, software engineer for Google's Compression Team said blog: "The smaller compressed size allows for better space utilisation and faster page loads. We hope that this format will be supported by major browsers in the near future, as the smaller compressed size would give additional benefits to mobile users, such as lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use."
