By the end of this year, an estimated 2 million households in the U.S. will have abandoned TV for the Web, cutting the cord with their cable companies. This estimate comes from Convergence Consulting Group, a UK research firm with a new report on The Battle for the American Couch Potato. That 2 million is up from the 1.6 million it was estimating a year ago , but it is still rather small and the number of cord cutters may very well have peaked last year as cable companies begin to fight back with TV Everywhere offerings. Nevertheless, the big beneficiaries of cord cutting are Netflix, Hulu, and Apple TV. They benefit even if people keep their cable but add Internet TV streaming or downloads to their viewing repertoire, as is much more common. According to the report, 18 percent of viewers in the U.S. watched free, full episodes of TV on the Web last year, and that is growing by a percentage point every year: