Facebook has courted controversy with new privacy settings that have made it difficult to hide personal information, and users have threatened to shut their Facebook accounts down. More than half of Facebook users are considering because of privacy concerns, according to one poll by Sophos.

But the threats may ring hollow when looking at Facebook's actual web traffic. In the United States Alone, Facebook attracted 135 million unique visitors in April 2010 -- 43% of the total U.S. population -- compared to 145 million for Google, according to separate data released by an analytics firm.

Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

in Network World's Software section.