Google reaches billion-user mark

Google websites were used by more than a billion people for the first time in May. The landmark figure comes with an 8.4 per cent rise in user numbers year on year, reveals new data from ComScore.

Microsoft with 905 million unique visitors in May was the second most popular site with numbers up approximately 15 per cent over the year. However, Facebook registered a 30-per cent increase to 714 million unique users.

Yahoo, which saw Facebook overtake it in October, saw an 11-per cent yearly rise to 689 million users.

ComScore has a ''global measurement panel'' of 2 million users to help it compile estimates and the data is then refined with page-view data it receives from more than 90 of the 100 publishers of web content, with Google being one of the few publishers that do not contribute.

At the time of the first measurement in 2006, Google had slightly less than 500 million unique users per month, with Microsoft taking the top spot at 539 million. Google's user numbers over the years, have also been helped by the company's purchase of video site YouTube.

However, Facebook beat Google on the amount of time users spend; the social network's users browsed the site for 250 billion minutes in May, as against Google's 200 billion.