ASP.NET vs PHP. Top 5 sites running ASP.NET or IIS servers

Hi to all developers,

I decided to write this post after 100th time I had to defend the technology i choose to work on (which is ASP.NET). Often when somebody(client) decides what to use for their web site he asks around and they get an answer like
"Use PHP it is the best!!! Do not use ASP.NET it is expensive and not safe".
That is a incorrect generalization and often suggested by people working on PHP.


Then that somebody (usually the client) demands me to prove that ASP.NET is a viable framework for developing web application. And after the 100th time(Repetition is the mother of knowledge) I had to write a mail to explain that ASP.NET is a proven framework for developing web apps here is what i come up with:

Web Servers
There is a place on the web news.netcraft.com/ that can show you witch site use what web server, among other things. Latest data (Jan 2009) show:

Apache 52.26%
Microsoft 32.91%

So one third of all the web servers out there a hosted on Microsoft servers and probably most of the use ASP.NET.

Hosting
When I say hosting I mean dedicated or virtual server hosting and most of the hosting providers on the web that offer both Linux and Microsoft servers have the same price difference.

Usually Windows servers is 20% more expensive than Linux.

If you take that the average price for an average server on the web is around $150 a month the price difference is not really a problem.

Top 5 sites running ASP.NET or Microsoft/IIS servers
So I used Alexa The top 100 sites in the English language and searchdns.netcraft.com to get to top 5 sites that either are running on IIS and/or ASP.NET (I excluded all Microsoft sites)

www.orkut.com - 9th place. Social networking and discussion site operated by Google. I dose run on Linux but as far as I see it the extensions of url's on that sites is .aspx and that is ASP.NET (Correct me if I'm wrong
www.ebay.com 13th place. Uses Windows servers.
www.espn.go.com 35th place
www.doubleclick.com 73th place. Coordinates targeted Internet advertising campaigns for advertisers, and provides ad management services, software, and sales for publishers. At least they corporate website is running on ASP.NET.
www.imeem.com 82th place. Users interact with each other by watching, posting, and sharing content of all media types, including blogs, photos, audio, and video.

Also www.godaddy.com is one of the biggest domain registrar out there with around 26% global market share, running on ASP.NET . Source http://www.webhosting.info/registrars/reports/total_domains/GODADDY.COM?ob=gs&oo=asc

I'm sure i made some errors in the list but I'm also sure there are many other popular, highly visited and secure web sites out there that run on ASP.NET.

So to finish with this.

The security, speed and stability of a web site or application is not determined by the technology or the server used, but the quality and knowledge of people developing it.

I said Good Day Sir.