Here's an interesting question: which technology is winning, Java or ActiveX? According to a survey of Web sites by Jeff Winchell of Application Methods, the answer is neither: the most often used software development technology on the Web--by far--is still CGI.
What?
In fact, according to the survey, which used Alta Vista's search engine to comb the Web for specific HTML tags, Java, ActiveX, JavaScript, and VBScript use is "insignificant." Check out this interesting chart, which refers to 20 million public Web sites:
Technology Penetration
------------------------
HTML 100.0%
CGI 50.0%
Java 0.15%
ActiveX 0.002%
JavaScript 1.5%
VBScript 0.005%
"It really struck me as, 'Why didn't anyone do this before?'" Winchell says: "With the Web, you can get real statistics that aren't just a sampling, or some expert marketing research guy who derives something, or some pundit who just guesses. These are the real numbers."
Most interesting: nearly every single use of ActiveX was on Microsoft's own sites