Google Tops UK Properties, Followed by a Surprise Second

The seemingly endless (this far) battle between Google and Yahoo over the whole Internet has had some modifications in the staring lineups for Britain. It's not the Sunnyvale-based company ranked second, not even third. It came in on a lousy fourth position, and the comScore press release related to it came in the worst day possible for the company, as all the media has been buzzing around the laying off of some 700 employees at least.

Out of the total of roughly 33 million Internet users in the United Kingdom, almost 90 percent (29.3 million unique users) have browsed to sites belonging to Google in December. Scary number, but come to think about it, that's exactly what the Mountain View-based Internet giant has been striving to achieve. And moreover, their offer is a lot wider than the competition's, being web only, unlike the runner-up Microsoft.

Bill Gates' company has come in second, with 27.76 million, which to me is rather surprising; despite having the most used operating system, I wasn't aware that it had such a great pull to its sites, be it video, finance or anything else. The third ranked is eBay, with 21.68 million, probably having such a high rating because of the Holiday season that passed a month ago and its PayPal strong point. I don't think that Skype was such a big seller for the company.

Yahoo! followed shortly, but it just did not make the podium, it lacked some 600,000 visitors, having 21.07 million unique users. Now that is indeed a big surprise, the once reigning champ of the Internet not making the top three.

The survey was based only on home and office page accesses, public computers such as Internet caf�s were not included.