>>106320068
>isn't it straight up a jpg replacement?
In theory, kinda. In practice, not really. As an original format, it's marginally better and capable of looking subjectively better than jpeg at the same size. However, nobody uses it as an original format, instead using it to crush down other files as much as possible, quality be damned.
It actually has a lossless mode like PNG that's straight up better in most ways, but again nobody uses webp for anything but shitty samples.
The real jpeg replacement is JXL, which can shrink the size of existing jpegs with absolutely no quality loss, and is a much more powerful format all around.