ASP.Net considered wasteful?

So, is ASP.Net really a pig? Is that why none of the big web apps use it? Is this correlation without causation? Let's explore some of the possible reasons.

It may be about cost. Start adding up how many processors it takes to serve those pages, how much the windows server licenses cost, divide by the number of users and revenue per customer, and in the end you'll keep a lot more money if you're running on an all-free LAMP stack.

Or it might be a more generational thing. The older generation of developers who cut their teeth on Windows naturally like the tools they're using and focus on them. They also live in fear and admiration of fearsome Uncle Bill, he who gives with one hand, takes with the other and makes the mountains tremble. So they listen to his oracular rumblings and lap 'em up. 80% of victims of family violence never escape their abusive situation.

The younger developers with the ostrich bone stuck through their eyebrow started out on web services and never considered Microsoft's opinion relevant. They never liked Windows anyhow, so why listen to that old fossil? Besides, this LAMP (or Ruby on Rails) stuff is new and shiny, and look, I can download it for free right now and use it immediately and write a promotional site for the keg party at Spencer's house on Saturday.

Or it might just be that ASP.Net is a windsucking pig that devours costly resources like 1980s metal bands consumed Bolivian marching powder, but without any speedy results. However, were this the case, I suspect that endless benchmarks would have shown this, which they did not. But are the benchmarks measuring the sort of applications that Windows developers of a certain age really write in ASP.Net (huge object-oriented confections with elaborately orchestrated design patterns swapping objects promiscuously like a 1978 key party) or a dumb Hello Web page hammered like mad (line-for-line translated simple I/O)? I don't know for sure. I have certain suspicions and recollections. LAMP applications are written very differently from ASP.Net applications, and it may not be the framework but instead the way the culture uses it.

Likely it is a combination of the three factors: price, performance, and fashion. One thing's for sure: of big web apps, there's nothing out there written in .Net. Unless somebody cares to enlighten me.