Speed is vital to web design. For this reason, Google decided to work hard to speed up it's web fonts system in collaboration with the Monotype Imaging Fonts.com Web Fonts team. The Google Web Fonts system now utilizes Monotype Imaging’s MicroType Express compression format for fonts on the web. Basically, this upgrade offers a 15% reduction in file size over the gzip option.
Ok. So Google Upgraded Their Web Fonts...So What Next?
Well, web designers should not fear. Google isn't requiring web designers and websites to update any code at all. They will update the CSS snippet and font files on their side. Basically, web designers and visitors get the benefit of faster fonts without any hassle.
Monotype Imaging, the web font software company that partnered with Google on this release, has decided to make MicroType Express available to the public at no cost. Very exciting. So, MicroType Express compression will now be part of the Embedded OpenType converter, adding to the WOFF compression in the sfntly library.