Microsoft will follow Chrome, Firefox and Opera by adding support for the Brotli compression algorithm to its Edge browser. The algorithm should make web pages load faster.
Brotli is developed by Google and should compress data about 20% better than other methods.
The latest preview version of Edge already has Brotli support but Microsoft will roll-out the functionality in the stable Windows 10 version with the Windows 10 Creators Update that is scheduled for early 2017.
In the current preview release, Edge supports Brotli on HTTPS and HTTP connection.s In a future preview release, Microsoft will update this behavior to only advertise Brotli support on HTTPS connections. Edge will continue to decode data that is compressed with Brotli over HTTP, just like Chrome currently does.
Google released its Brotli compression algorithm in 2015 using an open source license so that it could be adopted by other browser developers too. Earlier this year Google also activated it Chrome and Firefox supports it since version 44. Opera supports Brotli since version 36.
To benefit from the improved compression, both the browser and the web server have to support the technology.
