Many bloggers talk about different indicators to monitor the growth of the blogosphere, the problem that almost all those indicators aren't made to monitor such information. I was interested recently in the August 2006 Web Server Survey published by Netcraft to the information about the free blogging service provided by Google and Microsoft respectively Blogger and Windows Live Spaces. The growth was certainly enormous by 858K sites for Windows Live Spaces and 568K sites for blogger.

This month's data spotlights the fierce rivalry between Microsoft and Google, as the free blog services operated by the two Internet titans are seeing enormous growth. Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces (formerly MSN Spaces) grew by 858K sites, while Google's Blogger service added 568K sites.

This could be used in addition to other service such ping websites who have the ability to detect new blogs and so announce more accurate results about the growth of the blogosphere. The issue remain how many splog are counted in these stats, since lot of those blogs are automated and will certainly create big difference in the real number of new blogs.