In the August 2006 survey we received responses from 92,615,362 sites, an increase of 4.4 million sites (4.8%) from the July survey. This is the largest numerical gain yet for the survey, surpassing the 3.96 million site increase in June. The biggest one-month percentage growth remains the 8.5% jump in March 2003.

This month's data spotlights the fierce rivalry between Microsoft and Google, as the free blog services operated by the two Internet titans are seeing enormous growth. Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces (formerly MSN Spaces) grew by 858K sites, while Google's Blogger service added 568K sites.

Those huge gains helped Microsoft and Google's blogging services outpace Go Daddy and 1&1 Internet, the world's two largest web hosting companies. But Go Daddy and 1&1 also continue to grow at a rapid pace, having slashed prices and super-sized their account specs to compete with the free offerings from the Internet's best-known brands. Go Daddy added 368K hostnames this month, while 1&1 Internet added 264K.

The hosting arms race between these four companies continues to influence the web server market. Microsoft's blogs and Go Daddy's parked domains are hosted on Windows Server 2003, while Google's blogs and the vast majority of 1&1 Internet's sites are hosted on the Linux/Apache platform. Microsoft's strength this month helps it gain web server market share in both hostnames and active sites. In both categories, Apache leads with 62 percent share to 30 percent for Microsoft.