Apache Dominates on Busiest Web Sites

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The open source Apache web server is overwhelmingly the server of choice on the Internet's busiest sites, according to a new analysis from Netcraft. Apache is powering 66.6 percent of the top 1 million web sites, far ahead of Microsoft with 18.6 percent. Netcraft's list of the top sitesis based on web destinations visited by users its widely-distributed anti-phishing toolbar.

The data shows Apache with a much larger market share advantage than in the broader Netcraft survey of all 225 million web sites, where it holds a 46 percent share to Microsoft's 29 percent. "Examining a fixed number of high traffic sites produces a less volatile view which is uninfluenced by parked domains or the majority of personal sites, shared hosting accounts and blogs," Netcraft notes in its analysis. 

Microsoft's slippage in server market share in the smaller sampling reflects the impact of its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform, which contributes millions of sites to Microsoft's total. In this month's survey alone, Live Spaces added 3 million of the 66 million sites running Windows servers.      

Among the largest sites using Apache are FoxNews, Facebook, The Huffington Post and the BBC, while Microsft's Live.com and eBay use Windows servers. Google uses its in-house GWS server, and Yahoo runs on FreeBSD Unix.