Netcraft Releases August Survey Data

August 7, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Internet and Web hosting research group Netcraft (netcraft.com) reported on Monday that it had released the results of its August 2007 Web Server Survey.

In July the company received responses from 127,961,479 sites, an increase of 2.3 million from the previous month. According to Netcraft, Microsoft's market share continued to increase, with 2.6 million new sites, compared to Apache's loss of 991,000 hostnames.

The resulting change in market share saw Windows improve to 34.2 percent while Apache slipped to 48.4. Netcraft says Microsoft may soon challenge Apache for the lead in market share among its survey results.

Apache has led Netcraft's Web Surver Survey since it was introduced in March of 1996. In November of 2005, it was found on 71 percent of Web sites. In less than two years, Microsoft has narrowed the market share gap from more than 50 percent to just 16.7 percent. And among active sites, Apache leads Microsoft by just 12.2 percnt.

Netcraft points out, however that Apache's lead is still substantial, and that the server has lost ground to another open source server, lighttpd, as well as to Google.