While we all know that the times of the dotcom bust are gone and that Internet entrepreneurship is accelerating once again, news about the quickest increase in operated websites in the Web's history are still surprising. Netcraft reports in its October 2005 web server survey that 2005 will show the strongest gain of new websites ever.

According to the firm, there are currently 74,409,971 websites, up a stunning 2.68 million from the previous month. Compared to the beginning of this year, the Internet has grown by 17.5 million sites, which outpaces the previous annual record of 16 million new sites during the height of the dot-com boom in 2000.

Apache remains by far the dominant web server platform, currently powering more than 52 million websites globally, which translates into a 69.89 percent market share, according to Netcraft. Microsoft was able to grow its share as well: The Redmond firm's web server software is installed on 15.3 million web server world wide, achieving a 20.55 percent market share. Sun stands at 1.9 million servers (2.54 percent), Zeus runs on about 586,000 servers (0.79 percent).