How WebP Evolved, 2010 to 2024

WebP took fourteen years to travel from a Google announcement to a formal internet standard. Along the way it gained lossless compression, transparency, and animation, and slowly won support from every major browser. This guide traces that timeline and explains why adoption took as long as it did.

For the format itself, see What is WebP?. For how it compresses, see WebP Compression: How VP8 and VP8L Encoding Works.

When was WebP created?

Google announced WebP on 30 September 2010 as a new image format for the web. It was built on VP8, the video codec Google acquired with On2 Technologies earlier that year, applying VP8's intra-frame coding to single still images. The goal was a format that compressed better than JPG to speed up the web.

WebP began as a lossy-only format. Its most important features arrived over the following two years.

How did WebP evolve after launch?

WebP gained its defining features in 2011 and 2012. Lossless compression and alpha transparency were added in 2011, making it a PNG alternative as well as a JPG one. Animation support followed in 2012, positioning it to replace animated GIF too.

The milestone sequence:

2010 — WebP announced; lossy compression only.
2011 — lossless mode and 8-bit alpha transparency added.
2012 — animation support added.

By the end of 2012, WebP covered every job that JPG, PNG, and GIF did individually.

Why did browser adoption take so long?

Browser adoption was slow because, apart from Chrome, vendors waited years to commit. Chrome and Opera supported WebP early, but Firefox, Edge, and especially Safari held back, leaving sites to use a JPG fallback. Universal support did not arrive until 2020.

The browser timeline:

2010–2014 — Chrome and Opera support WebP.
2018 — Edge 18 adds support.
January 2019 — Firefox 65 adds support.
September 2020 — Safari 14 adds support on iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur.

Safari's 2020 arrival is what finally made WebP a safe default. See WebP Browser Support.

When did WebP become a standard?

WebP became a formal internet standard with RFC 9649, published by the IETF in November 2024. Before that, it was defined only by Google's documentation and the libwebp reference implementation. The RFC gives the format a citable specification and registered the image/webp media type.

The standardisation detail is in WebP Media Type and MIME Type: image/webp Registration.

Why does WebP's history matter?

WebP's history explains its present position: technically mature, universally supported, and now formally standardised. The long adoption curve is why fallback patterns still exist in older guidance, even though they are rarely needed today. Understanding the timeline clarifies when WebP became safe to use without reservation — 2020 onward.

That maturity is also why newer formats like AVIF and JPEG XL are measured against WebP rather than against JPG. See Is AVIF Replacing WebP?.

Where to go from here

WebP's path from a 2010 announcement to a 2024 standard is the story of a format that was technically ready years before the browsers were. Since 2020 it has been the safe default it was always meant to be.