How Much Apache?

......Almost with inexorable momentum, the Internet hurls itself into new territory. Some time ago, more than two billion humans had adopted at least one Internet-enabled device in some form, and nobody doubts that another two billion will accrue soon. New webpages increasingly find ways to inform readers, as more information in a variety of formats continues to be layered on the basic system of data internetworking. That growth has been measured in a variety of dimensions. Today I would like to report on some research to measure one aspect of the Web’s growth, which I did with Frank Nagle, a doctoral student at Harvard Business School (see http://ssrn.com/abstract1⁄42336372). We sought to figure out how much Apache served web surfers in the United States. That is not a misprint. Apache is the name for the most popular webserver in the world. It is believed to be the second most popular open source project after Linux. Why do this? Measuring Apache is a key step in understanding the underlying economics. Because it’s free, Apache’s value is easy to mismeasure, and that makes its economics easy to misunderstand.