This just cracks me up..
“Microsoft has been paying the large domain resellers to move their “parked” sites to IIS on Microsoft Server. Moving the parked customers of a single large reseller, GoDaddy.com, caused a shift of 4.5 Million domain names, or 5% of total server share from Apache to Microsoft IIS in the Netcraft report. This is an “appearance” change only, because the sites involved have no content. But managers believe figures like those in the Netcraft report, and act on them. It’s time for the Free Software / Open Source community to fight back.”
So if you have a parked domain name and want it parked on a non-Microsoft server then head on over to http://opensourceparking.com/ and find out how to park it on their servers.
19 Sep 2006 at 07:40 am | #
I'm not sure which is the most silly, MS paying for domain hosts to park the domains on a IIS server or people encouraging end users to make a specific choice on where to park domains they don't have content under...
19 Sep 2006 at 01:01 pm | #
So, what you're suggesting is that instead of skweing the results toward IIS we skew them toward Linux? I realize Linux servers dominate the web anyway (I host on Linux servers and can't stand to host on IIS), but the problem is not that Microsoft is skewing the results by paying folks to switch parked domains to IIS servers. The problem is that Netcraft doesn't distinguish between "active" domains and parked domains. The problem is in the stats themselves.
In this case, much like with patents, Microsoft is simply playing the business game by rules established by other parties. MS needs to show potential customers that they have a large and/or growing IIS installed base. Customers look at Netcraft stats. Those stats reveal a huge growth in Linux-hosted domains (including domain parking). MS, from a marketing perspective, needs to do what it can to reverse that stat. The quickest and cheapest route is to simply "stop the bleeding" of parked domains on Linux servers. It's simply the sensible thing to do.
In other words, parked domains are hosted on Linux servers because Linux is free, not because of some surperior quality of Linux (though it doesn't hurt). That artificially inflates Linux server numbers. MS is simply shifting the balance (of the artificial inflation) to reflect positively for them by essentially making their products "cheaper" than free (which is the most important quality for a webhost that's hosting webpages that generate near-zero revenue for the webhost).
Please, there's plenty of times when MS acts in dishonest ways, there's no reason to dillute those examples by including one like this.
19 Sep 2006 at 02:12 pm | #
The key here is Microsoft is PAYING to skew the results. It's sad that managers make business decisions based on the Netcraft stats because the stats are far from perfect, but it's even more sad that Microsoft decided to BUY better results.
19 Sep 2006 at 02:33 pm | #
What, so MS should sit on their arse and accept Linux getting *free* better results? I hope you wouldn't run your business that way...