Please stop using gzip size for these sorts of comparisons. One, gzip affects download speed, but not JS evaluation and compilation. Two, it makes the libraries seem much smaller than they actually are.
They measured scripting time directly, which is a much better measurement than uncompressed bytes.
> Two, it makes the libraries seem much smaller than they actually are
Would you prefer they gave unminified sizes as well? The gzipped size of a library lets us predict how long it will take to download, and how much that will cost for users.
You can think of gripped size as a rough measure of the actual information in a file, as opposed to file size which is largely meaningless in a networked environment.
Assume you have an app, rather than a site.
Your app has a login
Your password is not sent in clear-text, your server uses HTTPS for all its traffic.
You probably don’t want to use compression, then.