$118.49. That’s the price at which Amazon shares closed Friday, a day after the company reported a 69 percent jump in third-quarter profit and a 28 percent gain in revenue. It was a new 52-week high and the stock’s best since December 1999, when it hit $106.68. Which is saying something. Because as you might recall, in 1999, Nasdaq was soaring on the back of the dot-com bubble to levels never before seen.
According to comScore, Web traffic to Amazon in the U.S. rose 14.8 percent, far outstripping that of overall U.S. Internet traffic, which grew just 3.5 percent. “It appears that Amazon is gaining share the old-fashioned way,” ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller noted last week, “by acquiring more and more customers…and selling more to each of them.” Judging from the nice gain in third-quarter earnings the company posted after Thursday’s closing bell, that would seem to be the case.
Here’s an interesting Windows 7 stat as we near the operating system’s official release: It’s Amazon U.K.’s biggest pre-ordered product of all time. In fact, the online retailer has received more pre-orders for Windows 7 than it did for J.K. Rowling’s final “Harry Potter” book.
The Open Book Alliance–or “Sour Grapes Alliance,” as Google likes to call it–formally launched Wednesday afternoon, debuting a new Web site, as well as the manifesto with which it is challenging Google’s settlement with authors and publishers.
As the Google Book Search Settlement nears a Sept. 4 deadline for rights-holders to opt out of the deal, some powerful interests are rallying to oppose it. Rallied by the Internet Archive and veteran Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer Gary Reback, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are forming a coalition called the Open Book Alliance. Its purpose: To make the case to an already concerned Justice Department that the $125 million settlement is anticompetitive.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s hair-shirt apology for Kindlegate was a nice gesture, but it didn’t go over particularly well with Justin Gawronski, a Michigan high school senior who lost his homework when the retailer remotely deleted a copy of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from his Kindle earlier this month. He’s filed a class action suit against Amazon seeking to prevent it from deleting books from Kindles in the future.
If eBay shares were to be listed among the company’s other auctions, buyer feedback would more likely be negative than not. Hurt by the souring economy and increased competition, eBay reported its third consecutive earnings decline Wednesday.
Well, this is unexpected. Amazon has agreed to purchase online shoe retailer Zappos.com in a deal valued at about $850 million. Under its terms, the retailer will acquire all outstanding Zappos shares in exchange for roughly 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, valued at about $807 million, and some $40 million in cash and restricted stock. If the shoe fits, right?
Six years after shuttering its first e-book effort, Barnes & Noble has embarked on a new one. Monday afternoon, the bookseller announced what it describes as “the world’s largest eBookstore,” an online storefront that boasts 700,000 titles.
Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles it has sold since launching the device in 2007, but it may soon be selling quite a few more of them. The company today dropped the price of the six-inch Kindle to $299–$60 off of its previous price. That’s certainly not a dramatic reduction, but it may be enough to drive consumers who’ve held off on purchasing the device to reconsider.
Amazon’s days of booking sales from its business in Japan back to the United States may be coming to an end. The Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau has demanded back taxes of $119 million from Amazon’s Japanese affiliates, Amazon Japan and Amazon Japan Logistics.
The long-standing legal dispute between Toys R Us and Amazon has been resolved in the toy retailer’s favor, but at a much discounted price. In a regulatory filing submitted to the SEC Friday, Amazon said it has agreed to pay Toys R Us $51 million to settle claims that it violated a former exclusivity agreement with the company.
Microsoft rolls out its new Bing search engine a few days early. Plus Kindle DX to ship on June 10 and more on the EC-Microsoft battle (June 1).
What propitious timing. At a press conference in New York City later this morning, Amazon is expected to announce a new large-screen Kindle designed for reading periodicals and textbooks. And yesterday, on the eve of that announcement, came word that the company had been awarded a patent on the original Kindle design. The patent, #D591,741, is entitled “Electronic media reader” and it makes just a single claim.
Amazon has weathered the recession better than most, but not without a concession… or three. The retailer said Thursday that it is shuttering a trio of distribution centers in three states and will sack or transfer the 210 employees who work at them. It’s the first time Amazon has closed a warehouse since 2006.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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