The challenging economic environment is also reflected in the Internet use behavior in the U.K. People seem, now more than ever, inclined to navigate to webpages that offer discounts and saving tips. A snack-food business recorded an astonishing growth rate of 2,575% from last year, since its management decided to offer discounts to holidays spent in the U.K. for some of the clients. In June, the website of Walter Snack Foods registered, according to a Nielsen Online recorded, 444,000 users, compared with the 17,000 from one year ago.

Trovit, a specialized search engine that also offers information on bargains from a specific area, came in second place in the top of fastest increases. FindStuff, a website where people can make a shopping comparison and find out what the price difference is for the same product in different stores, came in at number three. Two coupon/rewards websites also made it into the top ten, which only comes to underscore that the British are really concerned about what tomorrow might bring.

Moving to the most popular websites in the U.K., Google confirms its supremacy, two of the three fastest growing websites in the top ten being Google Maps (with a 57% rate of development since last year) and YouTube (with 52% more users in the U.K.). Third place goes to Wikipedia, with a 41% growth rate.

With Google riding the crest of the wave, Microsoft is losing ground. Windows Media Player and Hotmail are the only two applications among the top ten most popular to have experienced a drop. Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst at Nielsen Online, explains what it is exactly that causes Britons to neglect the websites and applications of the Redmond company.

"Microsoft has had a very challenging time and represents a changing of the guard from the media behemoths to the more nimble specialists. Their Windows Media Player and Hotmail properties have been casualties of the social media explosion - consumers streaming video directly on sites instead of using media players and increasingly communicating via Facebook rather than email. Their messenger service has a smaller footprint - reaching less of the overall Internet population - than it did a year ago, despite a slight upturn in audience." the analyst said.