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Did you know? · No. 07 · Fun fact ·

Brotli means Swiss ‘small bread’ and launched with 20–26% higher ratios than Zopfli.

Card showing “20–26%” and “Higher compression ratios than Zopfli at launch,” explaining Brotli’s launch comparison.

In September 2015, Google introduced Brotli, a lossless compression format for web content. Google said the new format produced compression ratios 20–26% higher than Zopfli in its comparison. It also explained the name: “Brötli” means “small bread” in Swiss German, following its Swiss-bakery naming theme.

Fewer bytes can mean less for a visitor to download before a page renders, which can help pages feel quicker, especially on slower connections. RFC 7932 registers Brotli as the HTTP content coding “br.” For an ordinary site, it is most useful for compressible text assets such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, and SVG—not already-compressed images.

Try this on your site

This week, check your CDN or server documentation for Brotli (br) and enable it for text responses. Then use browser DevTools or curl to confirm eligible files return Content-Encoding: br.

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