The growth in online sales has not been seamless it appears today as Amazon announced its quarterly profit fell by 51 per cent the fourth quarter of 2006, despite sales being up 34 per cent over the holiday season.
Despite the tightening of margins at the internet retailing giant, Amazon managed to top analysts' expectations and were boosted by strong growth in the technology sector.
"You have to be a patient investor to own Amazon," Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt told Reuters. "It is a very, very long-term business in terms of hitting a leverage point. Nobody knows when it's coming. Some don't believe it."
Meanwhile Google continued to defy expectations as its profits nearly tripled in the last three months of the year.
The Mountain View-based search engine posted income of $1.03 billion, up from $372.2 million in the same period a year ago.
To be growing this fast at this stage is phenomenal," said Google's CEO Eric Schmidt. "Frankly I could not be prouder of this company," reports AP.
Better targeted adverts featured on its search engine, blogs and email service is believed to be one of the primary factors behind Google's success.
