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Google reported a 27% increase in revenues for the last three months of 2011, but even that was not good enough to meet Wall Street estimates, sending the shares tumbling.Google shares fell 10% in after hours trading to £370 ($575) .

It reported 3 month revenues of £6.8 billion ($10.6billion) and its net profit rose 6.4% to £1.74 billion ($2.7 billion).

“Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year,” said chief executive Larry Page.

“I am super excited about the growth of Android, Gmail, and Google+, which now has 90 million users globally – well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

But analysts were less impressed with Google’s figures.

Expectations were very high and Google have missed thier estimates.

The number of clicks on Google’s AdWords Pay Per Click networks rose significantly in the fourth quarter, but the amount that Google was able to charge advertisers for each click fell 8%.

For the full year, Google reported a 29% rise in revenue to £24.45 billion ($37.9 billion), with net profits up 14% to £6.25 billion ($9.7 billion).

Facebook’s share of the UK online usage has fallen by more than seven percentage points in the last year- raising concerns that it may have hit saturation point.The social network – which is expected to make an initial public offering (IPO) this year – still attracted significantly more online time than its nearest competitor, accounting for 52.6pc of all visits to social networks in December.

However, Facebook has lost substantial ground since the previous December, when it took a 58.5pc share of the UK’s social networking market, according to data from Experian Hitwise.

It slipped 1.3 percentage points last month alone.

The decline has raised concerns that Facebook is running out of steam in the markets where it is best established, whilst its competitors gain ground.

“Facebook’s growth is levelling out,” said James Murray, market research analyst at Experian. “Because Facebook had such a clear lead, it was always going to be difficult for Facebook to maintain [its position]. It has probably reached near enough its maximum growth.”

The figures will come as a blow to the company, which has been investing heavily in extending its reach and enticing users to click on its adverts, ahead of its long-awaited IPO. Facebook is expected to float with a possible valuation of  £65 billion ($100 billion)- the biggest technology IPO ever.

By contrast, YouTube, the user-generated video site owned by Google, grew its traffic by 45pc last year.

It accounted for just over a quarter of all UK visits to social networks in December, putting it 7.4 percentage points ahead of the previous year.

“We’re expecting video to be even more influential as a marketing channel, and marketers will have to adapt their strategies to incorporate a multi-channel approach in order to secure customers both on and offline,” said Mr Murray.

Twitter and Yahoo! Answers also made gains, but remained tiny by comparison, with 3pc and 2pc of all visits to social networks respectively.

Google’s social network, Google +, did not register in the top 10 most visited social networks at all.

However, Google grew its share of search engine usage market in the UK, edging up from a 91.3pc share of the market to 91.8pc.

Microsoft, its nearest competitor, was a minnow by comparison. Its suite of sites accountted for 3.6pc of all search engine visits in the UK in December, whilst Yahoo!’s popularity for searches fell nearly a percentage point to 2.5pc.

It is not just humans that are growing in size- web pages are getting bigger too.

The average web page is now about 965 kilobytes in size- reveals a study of top sites by the HTTP Archive trends.

The figure is 33% up on the same period in 2010 when the average webpage was even then a not so slim 726 kilobytes.

Keeping web pages small is vitaly important as not only are an increasing number of people browsing with smartphones, but also because Google use download times as a key search ranking determinant.

Analysis suggests the bloat is down to user demands for more interactivity, as well as the tools used to watch what happens when people visit a site.

To gather its figures, the HTTP Archive run a series of tests every month on the web’s top 1,000 sites.

These showed that average webpage sizes were trending steadily upward throughout 2011 and jumped sharply in October. Big pages generally take longer to load, which can mean visitors quit if a page takes too long to appear.

The metrics the HTTP Archive gathered suggest some causes for the growth. Images are a big proportion of the average webpage, and the higher resolutions people expect have led these to grow.

However, the statistics reveal that the category showing the biggest growth is that for Javascript.

This scripting language is widely used to make webpages more interactive and responsive.

The growth in the amount of Javascript on webpages may be down to the growing use of HTML5.

This is the latest version of the formatting language that defines how web pages should be written.

Mozilla has announced that it had “negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement” with Google for the next three years.Some people had wondered whether Google would back out of the deal as it tries to grow the market share of its own Chrome browser.

Mozilla relies heavily on the income generated by search partnerships.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, Mozilla’s chief executive.

Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice-president of search, said: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”

The foundation said the exact terms of the deal would not be disclosed.

In its accounts for 2010, the Mozilla Foundation said it earned £77 million ($121.1 million) from agreements with Google, Microsoft and others. The Google agreement was thought to make up about 85% of that amount.

The previous deal, which ran out in November, was signed before Google’s Chrome browser had gained a presence in the so-called “browser war”.

Some internet monitoring organisations suggest Chrome has overtaken Firefox to become the world’s second most widely used browser, behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Many put this down to lavish advertising campaigns undertaken by the search company across the world.

Chrome’s launch and subsequent growth has now put it in direct competition with Firefox, yet Google remains financially responsible for Mozilla’s survival.

Firefox 9, the Mozilla browser’s latest incarnation, was launched last month.

Mozilla said it was “30% faster” than previous versions – a problem that has been cited by many users switching to Chrome.

Google was the most visited website with US users in 2011 but Facebook was not far behind according to market researchers.Nielsen suggests more than 153 million visitors clicked onto Google branded pages each month, as Facebook attracted close to 138 million visitors.

Yahoo came third with about 130 million visitors each month.

But analysts warned Yahoo’s tally might be at risk if young people continued to turn away from web-based email.

The study is based on data collected between January and October and included visits from home and work computers. It involved a sample from a global panel of 200,000 people.

Website                                  Unique visitors per month
1. Google                                        153,441,000
2. Facebook                                     137,644,000
3. Yahoo                                         130,121,000
4. MSN/WindowsLive/Bing                 115,890,000
5. YouTube                                     106,692,000
6. Microsoft                                      83,691,000
7. AOL Media Network                        74,633,000
8. Wikipedia                                      62,097,000
9. Apple                                           61,608,000
10. Ask Search Network                     60,552,000

Source: Nielsen

Although Google trumped Facebook as the most popular web brand, the search giant’s Google+ network came far behind Mark Zuckerberg’s site in Nielsen’s ranking of the most popular social networks and blogs.

Google+ came eighth in the list with 8.02m unique monthly visitors.

That also put it behind Google’s weblog publishing tool Blogger, as well as Twitter, Wordspace, Myspace, Linkedin and Tumblr.

Google’s YouTube was identified as the most popular destination for online videos, attracting more than three times the number of monthly visitors as the music video service Vevo.

While Yahoo maintained its position as one of the top three web brands, an earlier study cast doubt over its ability to retain the position over coming years as it’s email system faces a declining market share.

Independent estimates suggest more than 6.8 million Android or Apple iOS smartphones were activated on Christmas Day – more than double last year’s number.More than 3.7m Android devices were activated over the Christmas weekend, Google has revealed.

Industry experts believe the rise is partly because entry level smartphones have become cheaper.

The statistics, from Flurry Analytics, suggested 242 million apps were also downloaded on the same day.

The peak time for downloading new apps on Christmas Day was between 7pm and 10pm, the company said.

It gathered its data via its analytics tool which monitored downloads and usage of 140,000 apps in both Google’s Android Market and Apple’s App Store.

Flurry Analytics did not break down numbers for the individual operating systems.

It said the figures showed an increase in activations of 353% when compared to the daily average between 1 and 20 December. App downloads were up 125% over the same period.

The Android operating system can be found on a wide range of models produced by many different manufacturers, whereas Apple’s iOS is only found on iPhone, iPad and certain models of its iPod music player.

Demand for the iPhone has reached such a level that China based manufacturer Foxconn is looking to double production to 400,000 units per day, China Daily reported.

Software installed on millions of Android phones is thought to be secretly tracking every key stroke, Google search, and text message by their users, it has been claimed.An Android app developer in America has posted a video showing what he claims is ‘conclusive proof’ that ‘Carrier IQ’ software installed by manufacturers of many US phones records the way those phones are used in real time, as well as their geographic locations.

Carrier IQ has claimed that the software only tracks information for the benefit of users, not for any spying purposes, and that it is “counting and summarising” information rather than recording it.

However, in a YouTube video the developer, Trevor Eckhart, did a “factory reset” on his Android phone, returning it to the condition in which it is shipped to customers, and linked it to a computer screen which allegedly displayed what the Carrier IQ software was tracking.

The demonstration shows that the software reads every keystroke put into the phone, as well as every text message sent to it. It also appeared to log location data, and transmit this to Carrier IQ.

Mr Eckhart, claims it is used by manufacturers of phones that use Google’s Android operating system, as well as some BlackBerry and Nokia handsets. It is not thought to be used in Apple’s iPhones.

It is not known if Carrier IQ is in use in Europe, where it might present a serious breach of the Data Protection laws.

A source at a leading mobile operator said his company didn’t install it but that he had been investigating whether UK manufacturers had done so and “couldn’t give a definitive answer”.

Google’s Chrome has overtaken Mozilla’s Firefox as the world’s number two browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer last month, according StatCounter. The findings quote Chrome’s worldwide market share at 25.69% and Firefox’s at 25.23%. Internet Explorer, according to the same findings, dominates worldwide market share at 40.63%.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Chrome is still number three with 17.3%, a 6.41% jump compared to last November. Internet Explorer held the top spot with 50.66% and grew by 0.42%. Firefox was second with 20.09%.

Internet Explorer’s commanding lead has been challenged by the browser’s near absence from smartphones and tablets.

Last month, another researcher, Netmarketshare, reported that Internet Explorer’s share dipped below 50% for the first time.

Safari, Apple’s default browser on the iPhone and the iPad, claimed 62.17% of mobile traffic. Internet Explorer, meanwhile, had 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to the researcher.

Chrome may be coming to Google’s mobile Android platform soon, according to reports. The 3-year-old browser’s growth, which benefits from being promoted on Google.com, hit 200 million users in October.

Chrome also became the most popular browser for accessing Mashable in August.

Google has announced that it is dropping seven more products in an effort to simplify its range of services.The out-of-season “spring clean” brings an end to services including Google Wave, Knol and Google Gears.

It is the third time that the US firm has announced a cull of several of its products at the same time after they had failed to take off.

Experts said the strategy might put off users from signing up to new services.

Google announced the move in its official blog.

“We’re in the process of shutting a number of products which haven’t had the impact we’d hoped for, integrating others as features into our broader product efforts, and ending several which have shown us a different path forward,” said Urs Holzle, Google’s vice president of operations.

“Overall, our aim is to build a simpler, more intuitive, truly beautiful Google user experience,” he added.

The seven latest products earmarked for the chop are as follows:

• Google Wave – an attempt to combine email and instant messaging for real-time collaboration
• Google Bookmarks List – a service which allowed users to share bookmarks with friends
• Google Friends Connect – allowed webmasters to add social features to their sites by embedding a snippet of code
• Google Gears – much-hyped effort to maintain web browser functionality when working offline
• Google Search Timeline – a graph of historical query results
• Knol – a Wikipedia-style project, which aimed to improve web content
• Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal – a project which aimed to find ways to improve solar power

It has now given details about when the switch-offs will occur. For example Wave will be retired in April, and Knol content will be taken offline in October.

Some experts think that Google is streamlining in order to concentrate on its Facebook rival Google+.

The network gained 10 million users within the first 16 days after its private launch, and 40 million within the first 100 days, making it the fastest-growing social network in the history of the web.

Google has updated it’s search engine results algorithms in response to timely search queries.The update is designed to work out whether a person wants up to date timely results or historical data.

The search engine estimated the alterations to its core algorithm would make a difference to about 35% of searches.

The changes try to make results more relevant and beef up features which Google believes set it apart from rivals.

By contrast, Microsoft’s Bing search engine emphasises their results from social search news.

“Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh,” wrote Google fellow Amit Singhal in a blogpost explaining the changes.

The changes sought to understand whether a searcher wants results “from the last week, day or even minute” said Mr Singhal.

The update is supposed to offer a better guess of how “fresh” the results should be.

For instance, said Mr Singhal, anyone searching for information about the “Occupy Oakland protests” would probably want up to the minute news.

These need to be distinguished from searches for regular events such as sports results or company reports.

Other types of searches could call on older results, he said. Those looking for a recipe to make tomato sauce for pasta quickly would be happy with a page that is a few months or years old.

The update to improve the “freshness” of results builds on the big update made to the underlying infrastructure of Google’s core indexing system in August 2010 known as Caffeine. That change made it easier for Google to keep its index up to date and to add new sources of information.

Writing on the Search Engine Land news site, analyst Danny Sullivan described the changes to google’s search engine results as “huge”. The last big update to the Google algorithm, known as Panda, affected only 12% of searches.

The update could have potential disadvantages, warned Mr Sullivan.

“Rewarding freshness potentially introduces huge decreases in relevancy, new avenues for spamming or getting “light” content in,” said Mr Sullivan.

The Google search engine algorithm changes are announced at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search