Web Server & Internet Growth Trends

The November 2004 NetCraft web server survey reports no real surprises, save one: while web server market share remains static (with Apache holding about 68% of the market, and Microsoft around 21%), the internet itself seems to be booming. If the pace continues through the end of the year, 2004 will be the internet's second strongest year for numerical growth (ie. number of web sites added) - second only to the year 2000.

Why does that surprise me? Well, in 2000 we were amidst the big net boom - everyone was jumping online, dot com's were starting up left and right. It was the golden era of the internet. Then came the big bust, and financial downturns for everything IT related, and 9-11, and the economical slowdown in general. With the IT market still seeming to be on shaky ground (though showing signs of life and maybe even improvement this year), it surprises me that the internet would have exhibited such growth under these conditions. There still seems to be a general sense of fear and distrust of the internet and e-commerce coming from the media and the public at large.

The growth occurring now probably has something to do with more non-business folks getting on the web: you know, bloggers, people with personal web sites, etc. Ebay is definitely booming, and large companies don't seem to have shied away from e-commerce (on the contrary, they seem to have forged ahead in anticipation of the IT-comeback).

It's definitely interesting, whatever the cause is!

Here's the NetCraft article:

Netcraft: November 2004 Web Server Survey: "In the November 2004 survey we received responses from 56,115,015 sites. The Internet has grown by 10.1 million sites in the first 11 months of the year, including a gain of 726,549 sites last month.

Barring a precipitous slowdown, 2004 should wind up as the Internet's second-strongest year for numerical growth, trailing only 2000, when the survey added 16.1 million sites. The survey added 10.6 million sites in 2001 and 10.4 million in 2003, marks that are well within reach given the pace of monthly gains thus far in 2004.

Prevailing trends continued apace in market share for major web servers, with the percentages for Apache and Microsoft fluctuating only slightly, as each continue to add users. Whle there has been some shifting between Microsoft operating systems (primarily upgrades from NT4 and Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003), the competitive balance between Microsoft and Apache remains static."