July 5, 2005 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- After widening its lead in the last few months, Apache lost some ground last month while Microsoft gained, according to research and analysis firm Netcraft's (netcraft.com) July Web server survey.
Apache lost 0.10 percent market share, dipping from 69.70 to 69.60. In contrast, Microsoft jumped from 20.26 to 20.53 percent. Meanwhile, Sun lost 0.12 percent and Zeus remained unchanged.
Netcraft's monthly Web server survey measures Web server software usage on all Internet connected computers. The July 2005 survey received responses from 67,571,581 sites, a gain of 2.76 million hostnames over the previous month.
Netcraft says the single month gain is the second largest in the history of the survey, surpassed only by the 3.3 million hostnames gained in March 2003. It attributed the growth to the rise in Weblogs, increased use of the Internet by small businesses, domain name speculation and strong online advertising sales.
