Rich Miller says 2006 was a huge year for data center stocks. Check out his cool chart:
In contrast, let’s take a look at how mass marketing hosting stocks did over the past year (out of laziness, I’m using 12 Jan 06 – 11 Jan 07 stats):
* Web.com: UP $0.14 or +3.33%
* Tucows: DOWN $0.05, or -5.38%
* WebSitePros: DOWN $0.90, or -8.91%
* United Online (parent company of FreeServers.com, BizHosting.com, GlobalServers, and MySite.com): DOWN $1.01, or -6.69%
One possible explanation for this discrepancy is, even as SaaS and social networking providers fill up Savvis’ and Level 3′s data centers, they’re reducing the need for end users to maintain web hosting accounts.
I know that Lou from HostMySite will disagree. A few days ago, he commented on my other post that we’re too caught up in our limited view of the Internet world. While the likes of MySpace and Flickr have impressive numbers, Lou’s not sure they’re widely accessible to the common person. He sees “a vast opportunity that lies outside the existing community of advanced web users”.
In which case, it seems our battle is against not SaaS and social networking, but Google and Microsoft.
(This chart was made with Zoho Sheet, using stats from Netcraft’s latest web server survey. Microsoft and Google accounted for 46% of last month’s hostnames growth.)
