Years ago, it was Google versus Yahoo. In recent times, that's changed to Google versus Facebook.
And if the Financial Times is to be believed, Facebook has overtaken Google's popularity among US Internet users. According to research firm Hitwise, Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US internet visits last week. Facebook's home page recorded 7.07 per cent of traffic and Google's 7.03 per cent. Now that's a slim lead but IT analysts are falling over themselves saying its significant.
All this coincides with a Wall Street Journal report that the Facebook float would be worth more than Google's. When Google listed, it was valued at $23 billion but some analysts are saying Facebook would be worth somewhere around $35 billion – $40 billion.
Actually, these highly paid analysts need to have a cold shower. Despite Facebook's growing popularity, it's nowhere near being as profitable as Google. Facebook's revenues are purportedly somewhere around $1 billion, while Google took in $23.7 billion last year.
And it's hard to work out how Hitwise developed those numbers. Google is a search engine so it gets millions of visits per second. Compare that to the number of times people might visit Facebook during the day.
It's hard to say where Facebook will be 10 years from now but given our dependence on search, Google will still be around.
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