zett - 2:01 am on Oct 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

This is probably more about lock-in and indirect data mining than anything else. If, for example, pages with this new format would get a better ranking on Google (due to improved page speed), I could envision webmasters to really consider this new format as default for their sites. But I don't see webmasters doing this without support from the standard browsers (Firefox and IE).

I think that Google (once more) entirely misses the point. The web does not need a new image format, because -as Lexus points out above- a new image format solves a non-problem for end-consumers. When you are on a fast internet connection, say 5 mbps (or 620 KB per second), the difference between 42 and 62 KB (20 KB) is about 0.03 seconds. Even considering a page with 100 images, the saving is just 3 seconds. That's a NON-PROBLEM for end-consumers, and so THEY won't care about it at all. (I agree, that it is a massive issue for Google, or for users on slow connections, but no end-consumer cares about Google's problems.)

In the future the overwhelming majority of web traffic will be video. But looking at new optical transmission technologies there is a good chance that even that will become a non-issue soon. With speeds of 100 mbps and more for each household you will be able to download anything -even HD video files- without significant delay.