Snappy is a compression/decompression library. It does not aim for maximum compression, or compatibility with any other compression library; instead, it aims for very high speeds and reasonable compression. For instance, compared to the fastest mode of zlib, Snappy is an order of magnitude faster for most inputs, but the resulting compressed files are anywhere from 20% to 100% bigger. (For more information, see "Performance", below.) Snappy has the following properties: * Fast: Compression speeds at 250 MB/sec and beyond, with no assembler code. See "Performance" below. * Stable: Over the last few years, Snappy has compressed and decompressed petabytes of data in Google's production environment. The Snappy bitstream format is stable and will not change between versions. * Robust: The Snappy decompressor is designed not to crash in the face of corrupted or malicious input. * Free and open source software: Snappy is licensed under a BSD-type license. For more information, see the included COPYING file. Snappy has previously been called "Zippy" in some Google presentations and the like.