One of the most predominant technologies on the Web over the past three years has been the open-source Apache Web Server. While it's unlikely that this is the end for Apache, it's hard to deny it's losing ground quickly.
Netcraft reports that of the 700 million-plus websites it surveyed this month, Apache's server share fell 5.23 percent and now serves 46.96 percent of websites, marking the first time since Dec. 2009 that Apache has fallen below 50 percent. That's a pretty far cry from the 66 percent share in enjoyed back in July 2011 or its Nov. 2005 peak of 71 percent.
According to Netcraft, the large change was caused by "the loss of 28 million Apache sites, a large gain of 26 million sites powered by Microsoft IIS, plus other reasonably significant gains by nginx and Google. Google's growth was primarily due to 3.1 million new sites using Google's App Engine (appspot.com) infrastructure and 2.7 million new Blogger sites (blogspot.com).