Amazon Com Inc

It's not even 10 inches tall, it's just one-third of an inch thick, and it costs nearly $500. But Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle DX, unveiled Wednesday, has already been assigned a huge job: reversing the fortunes of the struggling newspaper industry. After announcing the features of the new device, which include a bigger-than-ever screen and a PDF reader, the Seattle company also revealed a partnership with Washington Post Co. and New York Times Co.

Amazon.com Inc. makes its money as an online retailer. So why would it want a company that rents DVDs? Officially, it doesn't -- or at least it isn't talking about it. But an Amazon purchase of DVD rental king Netflix Inc. has been the subject of on-again, off-again rumors on Wall Street, and that speculation Monday sent Netflix shares up 7%. Although neither company would comment on the speculation, some analysts think it isn't that far-fetched.

Trying to expand its book sales, Amazon.com Inc. released a free application Wednesday that lets iPhone and iPod Touch users read electronic books purchased at the e-commerce giant's Kindle online bookstore. The software performs many of the same functions featured on Amazon's $359 Kindle 2 reading device released last month, including bookmarking, noting, highlighting and adjusting the font size, the company said.

As revenue-hungry states eye Internet retailers as possible sources of new taxes, Amazon.com Inc. is firing back. Already, the nation's largest Internet retailer has cut ties with its affiliate websites in two states to avoid legislation that would require the company to collect sales taxes from its customers there. And it is fighting similar tax proposals in several other states, including California.

Three powerful technology companies have banded together to oppose Google Inc.'s proposed settlement with the Authors Guild and the Assn. of American Publishers over the Internet search giant's book scanning project. Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have signed on to a coalition being assembled by the Internet Archive and Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer, said Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, a San Francisco nonprofit that is trying to build a free digital library of Internet content.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment plans to sell digital music without copyright protection through Amazon.com Inc., stepping up competition between the Internet retailer and Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Sony BMG is the last of the four major record companies to sell music without piracy protection through Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer.

Amazon.com Inc.'s brick-and-mortar competitors have yet another reason to fear the Web: a new service that lets shoppers compare prices and buy things with a few quick taps on their cellphones. Amazon TextBuyIt, which launched late Tuesday, lets people text the name of a product, its description or its UPC or ISBN to 262966 -- that's "Amazon" on the keypad -- from anywhere their cellphones work, including inside stores.

Amazon.com Inc. showed that it wasn't being hurt by economic weakness and high fuel prices, reporting Wednesday that its second-quarter profit more than doubled and surpassed analyst expectations. The Internet retailer also raised full-year revenue projections. Sales were strong in several sections of Amazon's massive marketplace. "Certainly given all the blood on the street, this is definitely a positive earnings," said analyst Jim Friedland at Cowen & Co.

Imagine this: You go to a bookstore, browse, choose a couple of volumes. But you don't want to carry the books around. So you ask the clerk to hold the tomes until Saturday, when you'll come back to buy them. When you return, the bookseller hands you the items but advises you that he's raised the prices. "I knew you were hot to buy them," the clerk says, "so I figured I could make a few extra bucks." That's what it feels like online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. has been doing to me. On Nov.

Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday gave a 2007 sales forecast that topped Wall Street targets and posted a 51% drop in quarterly profit that still beat expectations. Amazon's fourth-quarter net income dropped to $98 million, or 23 cents a share, from $199 million, or 47 cents, a year earlier because of higher taxes and investment spending. Sales rose 34% to $3.99 billion. Wall Street analysts, on average, had expected the company to post earnings of 21 cents a share on sales of $3.