Amazon doesn’t announce results for Q4 2011 until next Tuesday (January 31). So far we’ve had a good showing from eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) missed on revenue and CPCs declined substantially. You can see the Channel Adviser’s eBay coverage here.
eBay and Google’s results have created a veritable cacophony of speculative noise around Amazon’s results:
- eBay was light on GMV growth both domestically and international – also the BMV+CES categories were in serious decline – was Amazon a beneficiary of this (or a cause), or will they show the same trends?
- Google – you can surmise from their Google Prime initiative that they are reacting to what must be a big chunk of consumers (Amazon Prime subscribers) searching for products using google ‘less’. In his Q4 Google analysis, Henry Blodget pins the blame on Google’s revenue miss squarely on Amazon’s shoulders. Here’s the core of his argument: “as Amazon grows and offers a more comprehensive and informative product selection, more people may be starting their product searches at Amazon. This would cut Google out of the process entirely.” Further supporting this thesis, Google announced management changes in their e-commerce group that is adding fuel to the ‘Amazon caused the miss’ fire.