Internet giant yahoo reported a $153 million net profit in the fourth quarter of 2009, but the sales of the company continue to fall. But still, this was the best quarterly financial performance since Carol.A.Bartz took over as the chief executive a year ago. This profit is good as compared to $303 million loss in the same period last year. However, the revenues fell by 4% to $1.7 billion.

The shares of Yahoo surged by 1% in the after-hours trading as the news of profits was announced. Yahoo struggled throughout the year due to global downturn and trimmed the budget by slashing more than 2,000 jobs. Ms. Bartz said that the fourth quarter marked a strong finish to 2009, and that this was a transformative year for Yahoo.

Yahoo reported 11 cents per share and said that it would have made 15 cents per share, if not the charges tied with a proposed partnership with Microsoft. Still it was more than the average estimates of 11 cents per share by analysts. Yahoo had been struggling since December 2007, as Google has enhanced its dictatorship in the search market.

Microsoft reported a quarterly profit and revenue that soared as compared to last year profits. This was a result of the sales of the company’s latest operating system, Windows 7. The news came as a boost for the software giants whose stock rose about 0.6% in the after hours trading, after it had slided 2% during the regular trading hours.

Microsoft reported that its profits climbed to $6.7 billion, or 74 cents per share which is 60% from the last year. The company broke the trend of three quarters’ declining sales amounting to a record $19 billion. This was a really good result from Microsoft. There was confusion over the earnings which consolidated the effects of deferred revenue from sales of Windows 7 and its free upgrade. This deferred revenue was around $1.7 billion. Excluding this revenue the profit was 60 cents per share.

Google reported quarterly sales in double digits for the first time in the year. Google is in a turbulent confrontation with China, but the online advertising business of the company is in full flow driving Google far ahead of its rivals.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference that they were back in business full blast”. This is after the company reported a fivefold jump in the net income as compared to the earlier year and that its sales grew by 17% the fastest pace in the year. He said that the fourth quarter was an extraordinary end to what was a roller coaster year. He was also optimistic about the future growth prospective.

Amazon.com shares surged after the annual profits of the online retailer soared 42%. This was against the expectations of Wall Street and showed that even in the shaky economy the consumers were comfortable in spending some money through online shopping.

Amazon said that there was no decline in the number of customers despite recession. Recent reports show that Amazon will continue to make profits in the coming months and the revenue in the current quarter is tipped to grow even more than expectations. Hence the company has announced a surprising $2 billion share buyback. This comes out despite the fact that the company’s stocks are trading near its record high.