There is a lot of misleading information in this article’s quotes and critical feedback. Claims that WebP only serve Google’s interests and that WordPress already supports WebP for those that want to use it are exaggerated.

The whole reason for WebP is that it benefits all Internet users by sending smaller files and taking up less bandwidth. Is this good for Google? Yes—but it’s also good for millions of people on limited data plans and slow connections.

There were also claims that WebP will double the size of the uploaded images. Again, completely misleading. The point of using WebP is that they are almost always smaller than other file formats. It’s true that more files mean more storage, but consistently claiming that it will double their size is not being truthful.

While you may currently be able to upload WebP images to WordPress, there are very few tools for generating them. The vast majority of content authors have a hard enough time optimizing images and choosing between JPEG, PNG, and GIF. They’re not likely going to search for software to convert to WebP, adding an extra step to their workflow. That’s why WordPress needs the ability to do that conversion. I agree that it should be an option that users choose to turn on and not a default feature of WordPress 6, but that’s where the debate should be, not in whether to include it at all.