Microsoft Server gains 4.7% market share of hosted domains.

Apache loses 5.9%

[grelmar]

From Netcraft [news.netcraft.com]

This month's survey brings one of the largest one-month swings in the history of the web server market, as Microsoft gains 4.7 percent share while Apache loses 5.9 percent. The shift is driven by changes at domain registrar Go Daddy, which has just migrated more than 3.5 million hostnames from Linux to Windows. Go Daddy, which had been the world's largest Linux host, is now the world's largest Windows Server 2003 host, as measured by hostnames. The company said it will shift a total of 4.4 million hostnames to Windows Server 2003.

Subtext of the article:
The major hosting providers are the ones with the clout to swing huge chunks of the server market.

I guess Go Daddy is pretty happy with the results of the infamous "Superbowl" ad campaign.

[BertieB]

Recall [biz.yahoo.com] that GoDaddy's shift was for parked domains. So all those domain typos, domains not in active development, 'portfolio' domains, 'speculation' domains -- all of those made the transition from Linux to Windows when GoDaddy made the switch.

If the parked GoDaddy domains were excluded from the 'before' and 'after' numbers, what % change would we see?

Matter of fact, if all 'parked' or non-active (by that I mean "Here are some related searches from domain.com!") domains were excluded, what would the numbers be?

[kaled]

My contract is for Unix hosting. If my host switched me to a Windows box without permission, I'd fire them and demand a refund. Has GoDaddy sought permission from its users?

Kaled.

[coopster]

I think BertieB nailed this with the GoDaddy initiative regarding it's parked domains. However, what I think is going to be interesting is how that shift will play out in the next couple of months. Will GoDaddy see a drop in it's customer base? Will the market share swing the opposite direction? Parked domains are relatively inexpensive, well, let's call a spade a spade here -- parked domains are very cheap. I wonder what else is prompting this decision ...? Sure, I can read the press too but when GoDaddy, one of the fastest-growing privately held businesses, ... makes you wonder.

[treeline]

First, as long as the domain is just parked, it won't matter much to the owner where that "coming soon" page is served from.

Second, a great, irresistible incentive package could be offered to a private company like GoDaddy by a mega-tech corporation desperate for some good news, even if they have to manufacture it. If that mega-company consistently loses out to an open source project, providing lots of freebies and incentives to move meaningless domains might be just what they need.

If their "Get the facts" facts have been discredited, it's time to manufacture some new facts.

[grelmar]

Second, a great, irresistible incentive package could be offered to a private company like GoDaddy by a mega-tech corporation desperate for some good news, even if they have to manufacture it. If that mega-company consistently loses out to an open source project, providing lots of freebies and incentives to move meaningless domains might be just what they need.

I wonder just how much of this move was precipitated by this.

There's no way in heck that GoDaddy actually paid full license price for all those servers. That would be prohibitively expensive, and GoDaddy got as big as they are by managing their costs very well.

Well, that and crass advertising.

[jomaxx]

Who knows how many servers were involved? Probably more than one I guess, but a single server could handle thousands of parked domains.

I actually find it kind of presumptuous for GoDaddy to take MY domains and show a page full of ads on them. My domains aren't optimized for typein traffic or pre-existing links so I doubt anyone ever sees them anyways, but the whole concept seems unethical.