A new study by internet monitoring firm Netcraft has revealed that Apache, a popular open-source HTTP server, has now dropped to below 50% of the market. Out of 127,961,479 websites looked at, the sruvey found that Apache was on 48.42% of web servers, with Microsoft taking second place at 36.21%. This marks a dramatic decline from a survey taken in November, 2005, when Apache was on 71 per cent of web servers while Microsoft struggled to make 20 per cent. In a statement, Netcraft noted that "Apache"s lead remains substantial in both categories. It"s worth noting that Apache has lost market share to another open source server, lighttpd (1.2 per cent of all sites), and Google (4.4 per cent) as well as Windows. But if Microsoft continues to gain share at its current pace, it could close the gap on Apache sometime in 2008." Finally, it"s also worth noting that the Google server uses Apache software.