It could almost be a watershed moment—Google’s UK advertising revenue surpassed that generated by ITV1, Britain’s most popular commercial channel, in Q3, according to a Times analysis. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) brought in £327 million in advertising while ITV1 brought home £317 million, says the paper after doing some projections and putting a heavy interpretation on some disparate figures. It’s also fair to note that this refers to just one of ITV’s four main channels.

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Google already overtook Channel4’s ad revenue in 2006 and The Times notes ITV (LSE: ITV) executive chairman Michael Grade’s recent protests against the contract rights renewal limitations that restrict how much money ITV can make from ads while Google’s ad operation goes unfettered. UK online ad spend grew 41 percent to £1.3 billion in the first half of this year - the same growth rate showed in all of 2006, at the end of which online ad spend surpassed that of national print newspapers (IAB figures).