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Study: Google runs more than 10 million Web sites

According to new statistics from Netcraft, Google runs more than a tenth of the world's active Web sites.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Stephen Shankland

Paul Ford

There's no doubt Google is a vast power on the Internet, but because the company uses its own software to host Web sites, it's possible to see just how powerful.

Specifically, Google operates about 10.5 million Web sites in October, a 411,000 increase from September, according to statistics released Thursday by Netcraft, which monitors what software is used to host Web sites.

The figure comes from monitoring what Web server software is in use to deliver Web pages to people's browsers. The top two packages are Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services, but Google has been catching up since.

Netcraft found 182 million Web sites total, of which 10.5 million used Google's software. Apache ran 91.5 million of htem, and Microsoft's IIS ran 62.8 million.

That gives Google about 5.7 percent share, according to NetCraft. But the fraction rises higher to 10.6 percent when measuring "active" sites, which screens out a lot of domains that just have a token Web pages with no real content.

Google's own Web server software is gaining popularity compared to the top software products, Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services.
Google's own Web server software is gaining popularity compared to the top software products, Apache and Microsoft's Internet Information Services. Netcraft

Google doesn't talk much about its internal systems, but said in a statement, "The Google Web server is a custom-built server that runs on Linux."

Google's sites include several with a profusion of user-generated content such as Blogger for hosting blogs.