Source: Netcraft

Summary: Web server and Web browser surveys show a continued decline for Microsoft in recent months; even Bill Gates' successor at Microsoft is now running his Web site on top of GNU/Linux with Free/libre open source software

Ozzie has dealt Microsoft a blow as he suddenly left [1, 2] and according to Netcraft, he also moved from Microsoft Windows/IIS (assuming he was the owner of this domain at the time) to WordPress, which is of course all Free/libre open source software. As Netcraft puts it:

Linux nginx 17-Oct-2010 76.74.254.120 automattic Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 8-Oct-2003 207.244.116.225 Rhythmix, Inc.

Identi.ca's mjjzf wrote: "You want to see something funny about Ray Ozzie's blog?"

Well, additionally, our reader Oiaohm points to this page and writes: "Really if I was a MS share holder I would not be happy by the way these numbers are lookin"

Microsoft keeps declining in Web hosts of course. The absolute numbers in Netcraft may not be meaningful though (for reasons we covered before). It's the trends that usually count. The same goes for surveys that claim to measure browser market share; it's the overall trend one should mind. And while unbundling is sought there is no reliable way to measure operating systems market share, either. Well, operating systems -- unlike Web browsers or Web servers -- need not be accessible via the Web and many GNU/Linux clusters are in fact isolated from the Internet because they are custom-built for specific tasks which exclude Web surfing.

Speaking of browser market share, "statistics show European Microsoft Windows browser ballot screen to be useless," says DownloadSquad right now:

The browser ballot screen that Windows users in the EU have started to see since March, which was supposed to lessen the monopolistic stronghold that Internet Explorer has on browser market share, has proved to be quite useless. New data shows that the differences in browser use trends between the EU and the world from January to October are within the error margin. This is despite Opera's past claims that the browser ballot screen at one point made downloads of its browser in the EU skyrocket.

Let's take a look at the numbers (seen in the table above). IE use dropped 5.25% in Europe between January and October, and 5.92% worldwide. Firefox market share went down 1.23% in Europe and 0.14% worldwide. Chrome jumped 6.4% in Europe and 6.24% worldwide. Safari went up 0.05% in Europe and 0.8% worldwide. And so on.

We wrote about this last week (after The New York Times report) and about this ballot in general we wrote about in:

1. Browser Ballot Critique
2. Microsoft's Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
3. Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
4. Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
5. Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
6. Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot -- Claim
7. Microsoft's Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
8. The Microsoft Who Cried “Wolf!”

One thing nobody can argue about is: Microsoft's market share is eroding. ⬆