Google used by more than a billion people

Google and the various websites it owns were used by more than a billion people for the first time in May. The landmark figure, revealed in new data from ComScore, shows an 8.4 per rise year on year. Microsoft remained the second most popular destination with 905 million unique visitors in May. This was up approximately 15 per cent over the year, but Facebook rose by 30 per cent to 714 million unique users. Yahoo, which was overtaken by Facebook in October, saw an 11 per cent yearly rise to 689 million users.
A “global measurement panel” of 2million users helps ComScore to compile its estimates, and the data is then refined with page-view data it receives from more than 90 of the 100 publishers of web content. Google is one of the few publishers that does not contribute. The company declined to comment.
When ComScore first measured traffic, in 2006, Google had slightly fewer than 500million unique users per month, with Microsoft taking the top spot with 539 million. The addition of users to Gmail and Google has also been helped by the company’s purchase of video site YouTube. Users, however, spend more time on Facebook than Google; the social network’s users browsed the site for 250 billion minutes in May, compared to Google’s 200 billion.