It’s no new news that Facebook has overcome Yahoo! In terms of number of visitors; the difference between the two giants is not dramatic, but Yahoo’s efforts to maintain its market share are easily spotted with the search engine’s affiliation with Flickr and Delicious. Even Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, admitted that “our greatest competitor probably is Facebook, more so than Google. They are a hot site, but there’s room for more than one of anything”.

From Facebook’s perspective a real challenge was to advance Google, which is reigning over online media from a respectful distance. The glorious moment took place on Christmas day, when it was reported that Facebook was accessed more than Google, with a difference of almost 1% in UK. The moment captures a more significant meaning when you consider the fact that Google is much more popular in Europe than in the U.S.

An intermediate result from the struggle between the two giants is lurking, as Facebook’s video traffic is becoming more consistent over Google’s patronage in this area. The aspect is a heavy one, as Facebook rules the video media file sharing over social networks, directly targeting the leader in this space – YouTube.

Facebook and Google are also in competition over data portability, the personal cloud and how end users are able to manage their own content. This aspect is an important development for the personal cloud. Both Facebook and Google are fighting to establish standards in what users can do with own data, especially as it pertains to social networks.

Not long ago, Google had set up some straight terms in protecting the data privacy. In other words, Google Contacts API prevents other applications from sharing data. The step was a move aimed at Facebook, but it did not proved to be a major impediment, because the social networking website adopted the solution of uploading data, instead of importing it from its rival.