OSNews points to Netcraft: Microsoft Continues to Chip Away at Apache's Lead. “Microsoft continues to gain share in the web server market, chipping away at Apache's commanding lead. The number of hostnames on Windows servers grew by 4.5 million, giving Microsoft 29.7% market share, a gain of 4.25% for the month. Apache had a decline of 429K hostnames, and loses 3.5% to 61.25%. Apache's lead over Microsoft, which stood at 48.2% in March, has been narrowed to 31.5%, a shift of 16.7% in just three months.”
Wow! That's a phenomenally large shift in a short time period. Looking at the historical graph, the speed of changing is unprecedented. Even with the large shift of parked domains, there's something interesting going on. Did Windows Server 2003 R2 deliver some new compelling feature that caused several large hosting providers to shift over? Did they get a killer pricing deal?