According to data from comScore, US users spent more time on Facebook than they did on Google for the first time ever in August.

While Facebook had comfortably sat below Google for the last three years, it has surged recently, creeping ahead of the search giant around the time it hit 500 million users, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.

For the last few years, Yahoo sites had ruled the roost when it came eating up the American people's time, but the chart shows that it has failed to grow for the last few years, allowing Facebook and Google to steal a march on it.

Bouncing back

Perhaps the tie-up with Microsoft will help it claw back those precious minutes as people realise the sheer joy in trolling through photos of people they don't really know.

The timing of this particular graph is a little unfortunate, coming the day after the unveiling of Google Instant, which will trim yet more precious tenths of second off the time users spend there.

Of course, as long as people keep clicking ads, we doubt Google minds too much how long you spend hanging around.