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IIS Slips in Netcraft Survey

Microsoft’s Internet Information Service continues its slide in market share. According to Netcraft, a U.K.-based consultancy that scans the Web each month for the most-used Web servers, Apache made major gains at Microsoft’s expense in the November survey.

IIS is down to 21 percent of sites, while the open-source Apache is up to 67 percent of sites. Apache grew 2.8 percentage points. IIS fell 2.44 percentage points. Netcraft measured nearly 45 million sites in November.

“Microsoft-IIS share is now in line with its long term pre-summer 2001 level of around 20 percent,” Netcraft noted in its monthly report.

The bulk of Apache's gains came as Register.com, a domain parking system that has more than 1 million domains, switched its front end from Windows to Linux and Apache. According to Netcraft, the register.com move came only a few weeks after competitor Network Solutions switched its parking system from Microsoft to SunOne.

Network Solutions and Register.com were among a number of huge hosting providers, such as Webjump, Namezero and Homestead, to migrate to Microsoft and IIS in 2001 and early 2002. "Subsequently these businesses have either failed, significantly changed their business model, or reverted to their previous platform," Netcraft noted.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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