In reply to Trevor.

I really don’t understand where this bad information is coming from. I just tested Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, and I was able to right-click and save WebP images with no issue.

As for software and services that do not currently support WebP, you could have said the same when PNG was the new format. It was only because more software started supporting PNG that it became as prolific as it is today. If we want better things, we have to support them.

Supporting WebP simply because competitors are doing it is a bad reason in itself, but that doesn’t take into account why competitors are doing it. This isn’t a decision being made lightly or because of some Google conspiracy. When implemented correctly, WebP should not violate ease of use, contribute to poor management practices, or cause backwards compatibility issues. It has just as much reason to exist in Core as any other file format, and saying otherwise is no different than saying PNG support should have been relegated to plugins (for those weird people that actually wanted smaller file sizes and support for alpha transparency).

As for WebP being larger than JPEG, that isn’t borne out by evidence. Nearly all studies show that it is, on average, 25—35% smaller for comparable quality JPEGs.