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by dm2 4363 days ago
A third of Google's image size is this thing: https://ssl.gstatic.com/s2/oz/images/notifications/spinner_3... which is basically a loading icon that is rarely seen.

How does HTTP compression factor into image optimization? Is it possible to optimize an image but the HTTP compressed size ends up being greater?

You should release a monthly report with this same algorithm. You should also put in a column for competitors algorithm (not the just ones you beat, all of them).

Don't forget that some images are loaded after the page and content load, so they have very little impact on user experience (and all these sites make heavy use of CDNs).
2 comments
thrownaway2424 4363 days ago
That obnoxious spinner is used for Mr. Tinkles, the Asshole Of Notification. Because even after Mr. Tinkles starts ringing out, he has no idea what to say. So when you click on him to make him shut the hell up, he still hasn't loaded the hundred bytes of your notification, and you have to look at that stupid spinner while all of Google's horrifying social storage infrastructure lurches into action. And because Mr. Tinkles is part of Google's all-in Social Death Pact, you have to load that image on every Google property: Gmail, Maps, Drive, Search, everything.
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yalooze 4363 days ago
At first I assumed Google's reduction was so high because they'd scraped the site on a day when the logo was a doodle. But I just manually checked Google's main logo and was surprised to see a 40% lossless reduction. I would assume they dogfood PageSpeed (or at least use some internal version of it) which does image optimisation automatically for them. So is Kraken just better or is it just an oversight from Google?
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dm2 4363 days ago
There might be a browser support issue that prevents doing it.

The bandwidth and mobile loading might not be an issue because of their massive amount of data-centers to serve content from.

It seems like it to would be easy to test the new image to see if anyone reports any issues, but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by 40%. Make sure you consider that the homepage image is being scaled smaller than the actually image is, some optimizers take this into account and will give you a scaled image.

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DanBC 4363 days ago
> but there might just not be any benefits to reducing the homepage image by 40%

There would be advantages to people on limited bandwidth mobile data plans?

I'm gently curious about the amount of CO2 it takes to push that extra 40% through the Internet.

(Off topic: Seeing the Daily Mail on the Alexa list is profoundly depressing.)

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dm2 4362 days ago
CO2 from extra bandwidth? Probably less than a text-message.

According to this "Club Penguins" are a major source of CO2, I'm not sure why. http://visualization.geblogs.com/visualization/co2/#/club_pe...

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