Amazon.com has reported strong earnings for the third quarter of 2008, with its profit up by 48 percent compared with the same period last year. The company has, however, lowered its estimate for fourth-quarter sales.

In other figures, Amazon.com’s revenue increased by 31 percent to reach to $4.26 billion in the third quarter. This reflected a 29 percent rise in North American sales, and significant rises in its ‘non-traditional’ categories. For example, sales in Amazon’s oldest categories, like books, CDs and DVDs, rose 19 percent to $2.49 billion, compared with electronics and other general merchandise which increased by 52 percent to $1.64 billion.

Source: Brad Stone, “Amazon Posts Profit Jump and Offers Fuzzy Forecast”, The New York Times, October 22, 2008

According to comScore, Google’s share of search engine usage rose to 63 percent in August. This compares to 61.9 percent in July.

Not surprisingly, Google took share as Yahoo and Microsoft lost share. Yahoo’s share of search dropped from 20.5 percent in July to 19.6 percent in August. Microsoft’s share dropped from 8.9 percent in July to 8.3 percent in August.

Source: Peter Kafka, “comScore August Report Card: Google Gaining, Of Course”, September 18, 2008

Looks like Microsoft’s ploy to let advertisers offer rebates to customers who buy after searching on Microsoft Live has bombed.

Microsoft launched its Live Search Cashback promotion in May, and while its share of search temporarily rose from 8.5 percent in May to 9.2 percent in June, by July its share was down to 8.9 percent, according to comScore.

All up, the Cashback offer is having pretty much no impact on the search market. Back to trying to build a better search engine…

Source: Erick Schonfeld, “Microsoft’s Live Search Cashback Scheme Fails To Move The Market Share Needle”, TechCrunch, August 28, 2008