Apache servers gone

Jun. 08, 2006

At first glance, Netcraft's June 2006 Web server survey looks like bad news for Apache. And, since the vast majority of all instances of Apache run on Linux, bad news for Linux in one of its strongholds: Internet servers. A closer look, though, reveals a different story.

First, the bare, unadorned facts: the number of hostnames on Windows servers grew by 4.5 million. This gave Microsoft a 29.7 percent market share. That's a gain of 4.25 percent for the month. Apache had a decline of 429 thousand hostnames. That was a drop of 3.5 percent.

Still, that leaves Apache, and thus Linux, with the lion's share of Web servers: 61.25 percent.

If you take a look at the last three months, though, Windows IIS (Internet Information Server) numbers have taken a tremendous jump. Apache's lead over Microsoft, which stood at 48.2 percent in March, has been narrowed to 31.5 percent, a shift of 16.7 percent in just three months.

What happened? It's not like there's been some horrible security problem discovered with Apache, or Microsoft has dumped the price of IIS to zero dollars and zero cents.

Well, actually the last reason does have something to do with it. Most of Microsoft's gain, and Apache's loss, came from Go Daddy, a popular, cheap Web site hosting company, moving 1.6 million parked hostnames from Apache to IIS

A parked hostname is one that doesn't actually have a site. It's nothing but a place holder site, while the domain owner hopes that someday, somehow, someone will pay them big money for the domain name.

Still, as Netcraft notes, "While those parked domains were a major factor in Microsoft's gains, Windows also saw solid growth in active sites, hostnames that contain content and likely to represent developed web sites."

That's because in addition to Go Daddy, six other major hosting companies reduced their use of Linux by 40 thousand sites or more. This included the major UK provider PIPEX Communications PLC; Lycos Inc., better known as a Web portal; and New Orleans-based Zipa LLC.

Why? In a NewsForge interview with Go Daddy group president and COO Warren Adelman in April, Adelman said, "This was for one particular part of our infrastructure for parked domains. ... It was just one piece of infrastructure."

"Certainly Linux running Apache is an integral part of what we do here at Go Daddy," Adelman continued. Adelman declined to answer NewsForge reporter Jay Lyman's question about whether one reason why Go Daddy had moved its parked domains to IIS was because Microsoft has offered them a sweetheart deal on the Microsoft Web server.

Maybe I'm just a wee-bit suspicious, but it strikes me as likely that Microsoft did offer at least some of the Web-hosting companies an inexpensive "upgrade" to Server 2003 and IIS. For a small loss in the sale, Microsoft would gain some much needed PR for its Web server line.

After all, after being number two and never, ever coming close to catching up, I could see how Microsoft would want to manufacture some good news for Server 2003 and IIS at the expense of Linux and Apache.

However, after considering those millions of idle parked domains, this move strikes me as more pathetic than convincing.


-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols