Facebook Kicks Past Google as Most Popular U.S. Web Site

By Nick Mokey March 16, 2010

When offered the choice between looking for information on the Web, or looking at pictures of friends, pasting song lyrics into status messages and raising virtual produce, most people apparently choose the latter. So we can deduce from the latest Web statistics, which show Facebook officially outpacing Google as the most popular Web site in the United States this week.

The global analytics firm Hitwise announced on Monday that Facebook edged Google out for the week ending March 13, grabbing 7.07 percent of all U.S. Web traffic, compared to Google’s 7.03 percent. While still impressive, it’s worth noting that Hitwise only counts traffic to the Google.com domain. Sites like Gmail and Google Reader are not counted.

Facebook saw a 185 percent traffic boost for that week compared to the same week in 2009. The site has narrowly surpassed Google in traffic on holidays and weekends before, but last week represents the first time it has manage to keep ahead for seven straight days.

Why the boost? The runup to this week’s social-media-centric SXSW festival – which officially began on Saturday toward the end of the recording-breaking week– might have something to do with it. In the long term, so might the proliferation of large-scale Facebook games like Farmville, which now boasts 82.7 million active users – over 20 percent of all Facebook users.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Managing Editor

As Digital Trends’ Managing Editor, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team delivering definitive reviews, enlightening…

Computing

Some Intel CPUs lost 9% of their performance almost overnight

Someone holding the Core i9-12900KS processor.

Over the past few weeks, we've seen an increasing number of reports of instability on high-end Intel CPUs like the Core i9-14900K. Asus has released a BIOS update for its Z790 motherboards aimed at addressing the problem, but it carries a performance loss of upwards of 9% in some workloads.

The most recent BIOS update from Asus includes the Intel Baseline Profile. This profile disables various optimizations that are automatically applied on Asus Z790 motherboards and runs high-end Intel chips within Intel's specific limits. Hardwareluxx tested the new profile with the Core i9-14900K and found that the CPU ran around 9% slower in multiple tests.

Computing

VR is even cheaper: Meta Quest 2 just got a price reduction

A woman dives into action with the Meta Quest 2.

There are a lot of excellent VR headsets floating about, but a lot of them tend to be quite expensive, and if that wasn't bad enough, a lot of them also require you to have a pretty high-end gaming PC to get the most out of it. Luckily, there are some more budget-friendly options like the Meta Quest 2, which has just had a permanent reduction in price down to just $199 from the original $249. That's the second permanent reduction to happen to the Meta Quest 2, so if you've been waiting to snag one for a while, now is the perfect time to snag one up from Walmart.

Why you should buy the Meta Quest 2
While the Meta Quest 3 has already come out a few months ago, the Quest 2 is still an excellent option, especially given that the Quest 2 is less than half the price of the Quest 3 while still providing a ton of benefits. In fact, when you compare the Quest 2 to the Quest 3, you see that the big difference is that the Quest 3 has a higher resolution, better AR, and a better Wi-Fi speed, but it also costs $300-$400 more, depending on which version you go for. Similarly, because the Quest 3 is still relatively new, it doesn't have the same level of app and game support as the Quest 2, and while the library is getting better day by day, you may still need to wait several months before you see the same level of parity between the two.

Computing

The MSI Claw just got both faster and cheaper

Sonic Superstars running on the MSI Claw.

Compared to some of the best gaming handhelds, the Intel Core Ultra-powered MSI Claw has been behind in terms of overall performance. Interest has faded and it is cheaper at some retailers, but there's some hope. The latest BIOS updates for the device are improving gameplay, making it significantly faster. Combine that with some recent price cuts, and you're looking at an increasingly more promising-looking device -- at least, in theory.

Noted by MSI in a forum post, the BIOS on the handheld was recently bumped to version E1T41IMS.106, with Intel Graphics moving up yo version 31.0.101.5382. Thanks to these two updates, you can get big performance improvements in select games. Hogwarts Legacy, for example, now runs with rates that are up to 27.6% faster. Forza Horizon 5, meanwhile, runs with 18.4% faster frame rates.