While gzip compression is obviously better than this, which is more of an optimization, you can certainly pair this with gzip to get better results; albeit not much:
Sample JSON Object, using this technique:
>>> Length (Original): 25565
>>> Length (Original, gzip): 3966
>>> Length (Using 90deg): 15626
>>> Length (using 90deg, gzip): 3633
So while the optimization gives you almost 10k bytes in size reduction, the gzipped result is only a 300 byte reduction in this example.
Well, at the end of the article he shows this technique used along with gzip. He however does not show a comparison of the original vs his 90deg compression with gzip; so the difference there may be negligible.
Sample JSON Object, using this technique:
>>> Length (Original): 25565
>>> Length (Original, gzip): 3966
>>> Length (Using 90deg): 15626
>>> Length (using 90deg, gzip): 3633
So while the optimization gives you almost 10k bytes in size reduction, the gzipped result is only a 300 byte reduction in this example.