Sony's game division suffered a massive $847 million loss during its second quarter thanks to the turgid sales of its Playstation 3 console, which retails at a loss. The fiscal year end global sales goal is 11 million units. So far, the company has "delivered" (not necessarily sold) a scant 1.91 million PS3s. [CNN Money]

Microsoft, in case you'd forgotten, remains gigantic. It reported revenue of $13.8 billion for its September quarter, up 27 percent over the same period last year, with operating income of $5.9 billion. In other words, it made more money in profits than Google took in as revenues. Give it a couple of quarters, and it could buy the rest of Facebook just with the cash gushing out of its Windows and Office franchises. [Microsoft PressPass]

Comcast's profit dropped 54 percent to $560 million on $7.8 billion in sales. That's what happens when you offer lame excuses after getting caught triple-playing around with its customers' Net connections. [AP]

Dead trees will weigh you down. The Tribune Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, New York's Newsday, and the Chicago Tribune, among others, reports third-quarter revenues dropped 4 percent to $1.28 billion from $1.33 billion. Meanwhile, the Tribune's Interactive division posted a 9 percent revenue bump to $65 million. Hmmm. $50 million drop overall, $5 million gain on the Web. On paper, that doesn't look good. [paidcontent.org]

Amazon.com earnings quadrupled to $80 million as sales rose 41 percent, year over year, in the third quarter to $3.26 billion. Amazon also sold 2.5 million copies of the last Harry Potter book — its most popular new product release ever — but failed to make a profit on it because of free shipping and hefty discounts. And totally messing up our editor's delivery. [AP]

AT&T reported 42 percent year-over-year revenue growth after completing its BellSouth merger. The company said it added 2 million subscribers since the iPhone launch. Says Fake Steve Jobs, the faux leader of AT&T partner Apple: "Enough! Dear Leader appreciates your love and affection." [NYT]

After Apple's phenomenal earnings report this afternoon, AAPL is up over 7 percent in after hours trading to $186.02. This marks Apple's market cap at $161.8 billion — above IBM ($154.23 billion) for the first time ever. Feeling a little blue, IBM? (Image by sarahbaker)

In the third quarter, NetFlix's net income gained 23 percent year-over-year. The DVD rent-by-mail company added 286,000 new subscribers after dropping subscription prices by $1 a month. [AP]

Apple's net income in the most recent quarter was up 67 percent year-over-year to $1.01 per share or $904 million as revenue rose to $6.22 billion. Wall Street's average estimate was 86 cents per share on $6.07 billion. Shows you what analysts know. The company sold 1.1 million iPhones, more than 10 million iPods and 2.16 million Macs. [AP]

After claiming in August that Fox Interactive Media — News Corp.'s Internet division, which includes MySpace — would generate revenue exceeding $1 billion next year, Rupert Murdoch has gently lowered expectations. News Corp. now says they will reach "about $1 billion" in Internet revenue in its 2008 fiscal year, which ends next June. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Miss Google's earnings gloatfest yesterday? The company reported revenues of $4.23 billion, an increase of 57 percent over last year, and profits of $1.07 billion, up 15.6 percent increase just over the prior quarter. CEO Eric Schimdt's deep analysis? "It's obvious to us that our model works very well." Financial analysts from around the world managed to take all the obnoxious gloating in stride. Here's how they've adjusted their target share prices.

It's 1:33 p.m. Pacific Time and we're going. CEO Eric Schmidt, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, departing CFO George Reyes are all on the call. Ready to hear oh so much good news?

Google cruised past silly-low estimates in Q3, reporting revenues of $4.23 billion. That's an increase of 57 percent compared to the same quarter in 2006 and a 9 percent bump compared to the second quarter of 2007. Profits increased to $1.07 billion from the Q2's $925 million, a 15.6 percent increase. Catch the the conference call via liveblogging here, if you can stand all the gloating from Mountain View.

So everyone but Congress is lovey-dovey with Yahoo now that it beat third-quarter earnings expectations, right? Not so fast. Wall Street analysts still have their doubts, PaidContent reports. Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay doesn't expect ad revenue gains to carry over into the fourth quarter. He also doesn't believe Panama's improvements to search marketing will continue to grow quite so fast. Deutsche Bank, RBC Capital and American Technology Research weighed in too.

eBay reported record revenue but a huge loss — -$936 million on $1.89 billion in revenue — because of a $900 million write-off of its Skype purchase. This is the first quarterly loss for eBay since 1999. Whoops. [AP]

• After two years of a sustained assault on the Sulzberger family, Morgan Stanley has sold its 7.2 percent stake in New York Times Co. this morning. Unfortunately for the Times—and for Morgan Stanley!—its shares happen to be trading at a 52-week low today. [NYT]

Yahoo exceeded expectations with its third-quarter results yesterday. Panama, Yahoo's new search-ad system, is at long last paying off, if not in the grand ways Yahoo execs promised. And, after dipping 4.7 percent in yesterday's trading, Yahoo shares jumped 9 percent after hours. Why? In short, Yahoo investors discounted the quarter as old news, and focused on management's guidance for the future. They're ready to move on, in other words, and grant CEO Jerry Yang and president Sue Decker the "redo" they asked for. If only the actual company were ready to move on, too. But with its new plans, it appears to be repeating old mistakes.

MarketWatch, ahead of Yahoo's third-quarter earnings, said the company was looking to "start fresh." In other words, kindly ignore the drop in net income, the rise in expenses, the continued problems in display ads the company just reported — that's all in the past. How many fresh starts does a company need — or deserve — before current management is held responsible? One thing I notice in recent rah-rah stories planted by Yahoo PR: Everyone talks about how confident employees are in Jerry Yang. The unspoken message: No one trusts Yahoo president Sue Decker. And why should they, after she pushed out, in short succession, COO Dan Rosensweig, CEO Terry Semel, and popular U.S. display-sales chief Wenda Harris Millard?

Research In Motion beat Wall Street analysts' expectations, reporting a profit of $287.7 million in the second quarter as revenue rose 108 percent. RIM shipped more than 3 million BlackBerry smartphones. Guess the iPhone release didn't slow them down at all. [Canadian Press]

Fox Interactive Media missed its internal revenue targets for July and August. So, unless they have an extraordinary September, FIM will miss for the quarter. Perhaps the Google/Myspace ad deal isn't working out as well as Tom had hoped. [Silicon Alley Insider]