Growth is non existent and has actually gone down every year since 2008 according to Google Trends data.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&tz=0&date=...
I can not provide you an Install count stat, i am sure someone deep inside Microsoft knows that number, but windows servers are used in non-public facing workloads. Not on the Internet.
that deviation happened years ago.
However since we are talking about vmWare which is also using mostly in non-internet facing workloads then it is relevant.
I have some 20 years of experience as a system administrator on internal IT Teams, I don't support cloud apps, I do not develop cloud apps, i dont do DevOps, the only "cloud" companies like mine use is Office 365. I work exclusive on supporting internal workloads for companies in the Manufacturing / Industrial market segments
For industries like mine windows is the dominate server platform, most of our software vendors require it, often also requiring SQL Server. Hell I have multimillion dollar pieces of equipment that come in with Windows 10 has system they are using to control them.
Out side of the Web, linux is a minor player
So I don’t really know how else to respond to this… it also relies on a secret magic number that nobody can see that shows the real truth so it’s kind of a silly argument.
If windows server usage is growing surely there must be a lot of compelling evidence to back it up?
Google search trend isn't directly linked to marketshare