Online retailer Amazon.com's surprise profit announcement Tuesday -- the first ever for a major online retailer -- brought smiles to the faces of beleaguered "dot-commers" in this city pockmarked with failed Internet companies.
"That is probably the best news we've had since 2000," beamed Glen Nestor, a dotcom computer engineer, stirring his latte.
"Maybe now we can start unpacking our U-Hauls," he added, referencing the flood of rental moving vans leaving this city in the face of the dotcom debacle.
Tuesday morning, Amazon announced it had eked out a relatively small profit of US$5.09 million in the quarter ending in December.
Most surprising, the company reported the figure using standard accounting methods, instead of "pro forma" own-rules bookkeeping gimmicks.
No mean feat for an Internet company that netted a loss of US$545 million in the same quarter a year ago in a better economic climate.
Amazon's latest figures ended six years of losses at the Seattle-based company, and is one of the first pieces of good news for the battered dotcom economy.
Once considered to be the "new economy" of the world, the online world fell apart in late 2000, as investors realized that revenues could never match expectations.
Last year, according to Internet consultants Webmergers.com, some 537 Internet companies went out of business, an avalanche compared to the 225 that shuttered in 2000.
Hardest hit were the retailing Internet companies, which accounted for 35 percent of dotcom failures last year, and more than half of those dotcoms failing in 2000.
Many of those companies were headquartered in the San Francisco area, where the thousands of workers attracted to this so-called "new economy" center quickly drove up housing prices and crowded posh restaurants.
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