How Google is about to boost your internet speed and mobile battery life

Users of Google's Chrome internet browser are about to see things get a lot zippier after the company announced it is about to release a new algorithm that should see websites load faster and helping mobile users save data and battery life.

The algorithm, known as Brotli, is said to be capable of compressing web pages by as much as 25% more than its current code, Zopfli, an algorithm it has been using for three years. According to a post from Google employee Ilya Grigorik, the new update uses "a whole new data format" that compresses down HTML, JavaScript and CSS between 17-25% more than it does currently, which should allow for "better space utilisation and faster page loads" as well as "benefits to mobile users, such as lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use".

By 'squashing' the quality and size of background code for images and web fonts, content-rich websites should load much quicker on desktop computers and take the strain off mobile phone processors and batteries, as well as reducing the amount of downloaded data. Its biggest area of improvement in compression is HTML, where the new code can squeeze the website-building language down by 25%.

The algorithm, which was first announced by Google in September 2015, sparked gender controversy after Google was reported to be planning to use a '.bro' file extension — the term "bro" being a US male-dominated fraternity colloquialism. Google eventually released a statement reading "there will be no '.bro' in Brotli".

Google Brotli release date

Brotli is believed to be at the stage of "intent to ship", according to Grigorik. This means that the next update of Google Chrome should hopefully see some noticeable improvements in performance.