Nginx overtakes Microsoft as No. 2 Web server

Well that's not good... Microsoft has to be a little upset about this. 

With financial backing from the likes of Michael Dell and other venture capitalists, open source upstart Nginx has edged out Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server) to hold the title of second-most widely used Web server among all active websites. What's more, according to Netcraft's January 2012 Web Server Survey, Nginx over the past month has gained market share among all websites, whereas competitors Apache, Microsoft, and Google each lost share.

Nginx has made quite a splash since its creator Igor Syosev, along with Andrew Alexeev, co-founded the company last July. The platform, which debuted in 2004 and was designed for high-volume Web traffic, runs on some 25 percent of the world's 1,000 busiest websites, including Facebook, Zappos, Groupon, Hulu, Dropbox, and WordPress. Nginx last October received $3 million in funding from venture capital firms MSD Capital -- the Dell CEO's private investment company -- as well as BV Capital and Runa Capital.

According to Netcraft, Nginx now runs on 12.18 percent of all active websites -- that is, sites with unique content and aren't generated from templates -- for a total of around 22.2 million, according to Netcraft. In all, Netcraft found over 582 million websites for the January 2012 survey; around 18 million were active. 

Read the entire article...and maybe get your website running on this platform...