Microsoft claimed recently that "thousands of companies have built their Web sites on the Windows 2000 platform" and announced that "6,000 Web sites are currently running on the Windows 2000 beta". We were therefore puzzled to find that Microsoft's Hotmail still uses Apache 1.3.6 Unix on FreeBSD, while msn.com uses IIS 4.0 on NT or Windows 95, according to Netcraft. Microsoft.com itself is running on the Windows 2000 beta. Microsoft was also keen to point out that "the Windows platform, including the forthcoming Windows 2000, is used to power more than half of the top shopping sites, according to Netcraft..." Of course, qualifying that claim to "top shopping sites" does give some definitional latitude. However, that's not all that Netcraft is allegedly saying. Netcraft's November 1999 survey shows that Apache powers 55 percent of servers (up 1 per cent on the previous month) while Microsoft-IIS fell to 24 per cent (down 1 per cent on October). Netscape trails at 7 per cent. Microsoft has always joked about eating its own dog meat, so why isn't Microsoft using the Windows 2000 beta for all its sites? After all, Craig Bellinson, the W2K lead project manager said it is "incredibly more scalable and reliable". Could it be that it isn't actually scalable enough for Hotmail, or reliable enough for MSN? And why does MSN run on NT and Windows 95? We think we should be told. ®