Tracking Web Services Growth on the Internet

This table lists the number of Web services listed at XMethods since it began. Numbers should be exact (except where indiciated with "~") because I'm parsing XMethod's HTML. But errors may have been made.

Date	Number of services	Number of hosts
Apr 1, 2001	35	10
Nov 27, 2001	115	66
Jan 24, 2002	119	66
Apr 25, 2002	~165	?
Jun 24, 2002	~207	?
Oct 16, 2002	252	135
Feb 23, 2003	300	155
May 15, 2003	358	168
July 21, 2003	342	163
Sept 11, 2003	347	168
Oct 22, 2003	354	171
Nov 17, 2003	361	176
Dec 31, 2003	366	178
Jan 25, 2004	356	169
Feb 14, 2004	338	177
Mar 29, 2004	364	171
May 17, 2004	381	178
July 7, 2004	371	174
August 4, 2004	373	177
September 3, 2004	370	172
October 4, 2004	377	180
November 3, 2004	369	176
December 7, 2004	387	179
January 3, 2005	376	177
March 23, 2005	412	188
August 10, 2005	430	190
October 11, 2005	433	186
January 4, 2006	465	198
June 25, 2006	448	202
October 17, 2006	500	199
January 24, 2007	517	204

Predictions about these numbers;

growth in sites and services will be linear at best, due to inherrent integration complexity problems
by then end of 2003, less than 400 services will be available
by the end of 2004, the number of hosts will have plateaued or be falling
by the end of 2005, the number of services will have plateaued or be falling

Note that according to the Xmethods folks, the dip in July 2003 was likely due to several services not being pingable for some time.

Also see the growth of the Web.