back to article Apache server thumps Microsoft and Google

Apache's HTTP server gained a fresh lease of life in 2010, widening the gap on rivals and consolidating its position as the web's most popular web server. Crunching data from Netcraft, web monitoring service Royal Pingdom says that the number of websites using Apache surged 37 per cent between December 2009 and December 2010, …

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  1. That's a smack down

    A little more research please....

    In case anyone is interested, this "opinion" is derived from the Dec 2010 Netcraft survey: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/

    The data in the survey seems like it does not support the same excitement as this article does.

    1. kirovs

      Really?

      Yes it does. MS is at the same market share end of 2010 as in 2010, but lost a lot from its peak and Apache gained a lot. What do you see as not supported by the data?

  2. efeffess

    "Apache's closet competitor is still Microsoft's IIS"

    Perhaps it's time Microsoft experienced its liberation and came out of that closet. It's worked for many people I know, and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Arguably

    ..99% of Apache servers run on Linux. But Linux runs also a lot of other things like Stock Exchanges, the Google Search Engine and Facebook.

    So, arguably, Linux is the biggest Free Software Sucess Story. There is no need for the oversized, fatty and slow-moving american corporation to build and maintain the core infrastructure of the internet and the datacenter.

    Individual skilled persons and small companies are sufficient to build largest-scale systems in the 21st century. Microsoft is on the intellectual decline, while all sorts of new concepts appear in Linux, BSD and many other places such as PHP, Ruby, LSM, Hadoop, JavaScript, Bittorrent and much more.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Well Duh

    Having operated both Apache and IIS websites I can say that Apache has resulted in far fewer suicidal thoughts.

    I've had IIS kick me in the balls over and over: Microsoft have a thing for outright lying when giving error messages - 404 is not found, right? Not according to Microsoft - Microsoft will give a 404 when a 500 is more appropriate. F$#@ that. Give me a program that gives me honest messages about why something has gone wrong.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    14,900,000 websites belonging to Google?

    "Google's own web server ran 14.9 million sites, an increase of 5.6 per cent. Google Web Server is used only by Google"

    How and why is Google running 14.9 million websites? That doens't sound right to me.

    Also, anyone know what has been defined as a website for the purposes of this study because a hosted blog when hosted on something like Blogger.com, is not a distinct website but is apparently where most of the Google webserver figures come from.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Lies, Damned Lies And Statistics

      Yeah, Winston quote applies here also.

    2. Hans 1
      Boffin

      hm ...

      sites.google.com

  6. Gordon Pryra

    Google Web Server

    Google Web Server is used only by Google. Does this mean that Google are actually hosting almost 6% of the worlds websites?

    Or is this figure counting each blogger site (for example) as a separate site?

  7. pkesel

    Who cares?

    It's quite often not the web server that's important. It's the application server and other pieces behind it that have the sophistication. Web servers are like the paint on the front door.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Thumb Up

      Award

      Whether anyone cares about webservers or not, you sir win the award for the most inane comparison ever. And without even involving cars! I didn't think it possible.

  8. Hans 1
    Grenade

    November survey far more newsworthy!

    For the moment, Windows Live Spaces sites in the sites.live.com domain whose blogs have been moved to WordPress.com remain online redirecting users to their new location. For example, http://mikese.mobile.spaces.live.com still exists served by Microsoft but when accessed redirects to http://mikese.wordpress.com, which is running nginx. In contrast, blogs on their own domains will result in losses for Microsoft as the DNS can simply be updated with no need for redirection. An example of a site in this category is http://ozzie.net which switched over in the middle of October; at the time it was not clear if this change from IIS on Windows to nginx on Linux was a deliberate move by Ray Ozzie as he prepared to step down as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, though it now appears to be part of the wider Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com migration. Since WordPress.com is served by nginx, we expect to see a continued increase in sites using nginx as the migration takes place.

    So mickeysoft does not trust iis ... ;-)

    1. Daniel 1

      nginx continues to be the non-reported story in all this, really

      It has a bigger share of total sites than Google's server, and yet it has no single major vendor pushing it out into the market (in fact it only has one major developer - Igor Sysoev). It is being adopted simply because it is a very good, light weight, high-delivery web server.

      (Of course, people will say "who cares about web servers?", but this is a bit like the British motorcycle industry looking at the blue-and-white Honda step-through, back in 1970, and saying "who cares about small motorcycles? We have the Bonneville!")

  9. T J
    Megaphone

    "COMPETITORRRRR" (Yeah??)

    " ...the number of websites using Apache surged 37 per cent between December 2009 and December 2010, growing to 152 million sites.

    Apache's closet competitor is still Microsoft's IIS, which hosts 57 million sites"

    HOW is that even a "competitor" ???

    Because its m$ so they "must be in the game" somehow??

  10. corrodedmonkee

    It's funny really

    I was helping a friend out the other day with some Apache problems. I've not been admining it very long, but I'm getting on with it much better. My friend however comes from a .NET background, so is comfortable with IIS, and spent a lot of timing complaining at Apache, PHP and Open Source in general.

    I think the majority of the problem came down to he wasn't reading the configs properly, skimming them. I think he might have been too used to Wizards. It is odd though, I don't like SQL Server at work for the opposite reason, I don't like having to use a GUI on a server.

    Be interesting to see the what the Apache servers were actually serving though.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      You don't know???

      I think the answer is porn....and I do my share to keep the stats up.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @corrodedmonkee: Illiterates Always Complain About Reading

    ..and Writing. Comic Books give them a "better user experience".

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