webp files - What are they, and why do the wretched things exist?

[OwlHoot]

When I right-click an image on a web page to save it (on Windows), as often as not these days the file name suffix comes up as ".webp".

I have found that I have to manually change this each time to .png to avoid problems viewing the file later.

Anyone know what this damned webp format is all about and why it was introduced? I could Google, but someone here must know. TIA

[TestMangler]

When I right-click an image on a web page to save it (on Windows), as often as not these days the file name suffix comes up as ".webp".

I have found that I have to manually change this each time to .png to avoid problems viewing the file later.

Anyone know what this damned webp format is all about and why it was introduced? I could Google, but someone here must know. TIA

It was introduced to try and stop thieves right clicking on images and saving them to their local Windows PC.

[mattster]

It's just a new compressed image format, somewhat smaller than either png or jpg, and supports transparency, unlike jpg. Not sure why changing the extension to png should work, I imagine whatever you ultimately open it in is still treating it as webp so maybe your are missing a file association?