The internet grew by at least 1.56 million sites in December, reaching 186.7 million sites, according to recent research.
Netcraft's December 2008 Web Server Survey reveals that Apache continues to hold dominance in the server wars, and gained nearly 1% market share to reach 51.2%. Microsoft's market share fell from 34.5% to 33.8%, whereas Google lost around 0.3% of its share. Microsoft and Google stayed in second and third place, respectively.
Judging by past surveys, the number of sites on the internet has grown by at least 11 million in the past six months. On average, roughly 1.5 million sites were added per month.
The largest gain occurred in September, when 4.5 million new sites were added, quite possibly because of the Beijing Olympics.