News
Netcraft: Microsoft Loses Web Server Share in August
- By Scott Bekker
- August 21, 2002
The market shares of the major Web servers surge and ebb with the fortunes of the largest Web hosters. When major ISPs go out of business or shift to Apache or to Internet Information Services, market shares for the platforms, as tracked by researchers at U.K.-based Netcraft, rise or fall.
In August, Microsoft took a beating as Register.com flip-flopped to a Linux front end from Windows and Homestead.com deleted a million sites due to the weakness of a business model that had relied on advertising, according to Netcraft.
Microsoft lost about six points of market share in August, falling from nearly 32 percent share in July to a little over 25 percent in August, Netcraft reported in its survey.
The open-source Apache Web server, meanwhile, surged back above 60 percent market share. Apache picked up Microsoft's dropped 6 points, jumping from almost 58 percent market share in July to close to 64 percent in August.
Meanwhile, with the Federal Trade Commission looking into the relationship between Verisign and Interland on marketing domain names, Microsoft stands to lose a large repository of sites parked on its Web server, Netcraft notes.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.