Online retailer Amazon has trebled profits for the second quarter, traditionally the quietest for retailers.Profits and sales have both risen higher than predicted, with profits up from $22m (£10.7m) to $78m (£37.8m) and sales increasing 35 per cent to $2.9bn (£1.4bn).

Amazon has now raised its full year sales forecast to between $13.8bn (£6.7bn) and $14.3bn (££7bn) and profits forecast to as much as $640m (£312m).

International sales, which include the firms UK operations, are up 31 per cent to $1.3bn (£633m).

Electronic products and other non-media items made the most significant gains - up 55 per cent to $970m (£472.7m) - and now account for 34 per cent of all business.

Media sales, which include Amazons book division, have risen 27 per cent to $1.8bn (£877m). Book sales also include more than two million pre-orders for the new Harry Potter book.

Amazon is continuing to expand its operations, with plans to launch a digital music store that will allow customers to download music without any digital copyright protection.

Before we start, let the graphs speak! 

The 2007 Q2 for Yahoo has been released with disappointing results. There has been blame put on the previous mistakes which subsequently, did not bring in as much revenue from display ads and affiliates.

Jerry Yang promises to turn this around. Coming in with $599 million, Yahoo’s marketing services revenues from affiliate sites has dropped 5% from Q2 last year. However, revenues from Yahoo’s owned and operated sites were up 18% over last year’s Q2 coming in with $887 million.

The company’s net income fell about $3 million from $164 million this time 2006, yet the revenues rose about 8% to $1.7 billion this time last year.

Yang, co-founder and recently named CEO of Yahoo, has given investors a promise that he will spend the following 100 days revamping the organization. This will happen through planning investments, deemphasizing underperforming initiatives or cutting them altogether and hiring new staff members.

He said, “There is a significant gap between where we are and where we need to be in the competitive landscape. There will be no sacred cows and we need to move very quickly.”

President Susan Decker pointed to keeping Overture as a standalone unit as one of the company’s potential slipups. However, she also has referred to the integration of the sales and marketing groups as “points of light”, hailing the embracing of the Panama ad platform. She said, “Various legacy clouds are masking these points of light. We believe that some of the legacy issues that were hampering growth will be addressed.”

Yahoo is hoping that their recent launch of SmartAds, an automated behavioral system and the approval of the acquisition of Right Media will provide the momentum towards an improved Q3 and Q4 report