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Chrome on iOS reduces mobile data by up to half – but only for invited users

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If you use Chrome on your iPhone or iPad, and you’re not running the latest version, you may want to update it. Google has started inviting selected users to enable the data-compression feature it first launched on Android back in March.

For an average web page, over 60% of the transferred bytes are images. The proxy optimizes and transcodes all images to the WebP format, which requires fewer bytes than other popular formats, such as JPEG and PNG. The proxy also performs intelligent compression and minification of HTML, JavaScript and CSS resources, which removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page. These optimizations, combined with mandatory gzip compression for all resources, can result in substantial bandwidth savings.

Or, in less technical terms, Chrome strips out everything not needed to display webpages properly, so you get the same experience but with up to 50% less data usage. For those who do a lot of browsing on 3G/4G, that can make a big difference to your monthly data bill.

So far, only a relatively small number of users appear to have been invited to participate, but that number is likely to grow over the next few weeks.

Via TechCrunch

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Comments

  1. Richard Day - 11 years ago

    They then insert ads onto the page instead onto otherwise ‘ad-less’ sites (e.g. BBC News)

  2. Jupp Müller - 11 years ago

    Not to mention all your traffic is routed through google and they can watch which sites you browse.

  3. standardpull - 11 years ago

    In other terms- Google Chrome reads all your data by shipping it through Google’s caching and compression servers first.

    Of course, Opera Mobile has has this on their iOS browser for a few years. But I didn’t use it their either.

    With LTE and WIFI there isn’t a real need, and the latency can be killer. EDGE users may find it useful, however.

  4. narfmaster - 11 years ago

    Got an invitation to join a few days ago. Clicked no, of course.
    And not just because I generally have a good signal and unlimited data.

  5. Tom Ellingham - 11 years ago

    I’ve saved 35% thus far. You also have to opt-in to mobile data compression, I think the default is wi-fi only.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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