Shoppers rush to Amazon.com

Could it be that,thanks to rising fuel prices,people are opting to shop online and save transport costs to the market.Well with Amazon.com-the world's largest internet retailer-it certainly seems to be the case.The Seattle based company saw second quarter profit more than double,and it has further raised its sales forecast for the year.Amazon.com made $ 158 million in the quarter ending june,2008,up from $ 78 million a year ago and beating analysts forecast.Revenues climbed 41% to $ 4.1 billion while the number of active customer accounts jumped by 18% to more than 81 million.The results benefited from a $ 53 million non-cash gain from the sale of Amazon's European DVD rental business.Sales of books,CDs and DVDs climbed 31% to $ 2.41 billion in the quarter,while electronics and other general merchandise such as video games jumped 58% to $ 1.53 billion.It is assuming that the higher fuel prices may give the company a relative advantage over the other retailers.Even just driving 10 miles these days is a few dollars worth of gasoline and consumers taking all these things into account and trying to do trip consolidation.