Online Retail Officially Profitable?

"Of course, it's always easy to grow revenue when you're giving away dollar bills for seventy-five cents, which was basically the business model of many dot coms. Then, the bubble popped and many dot coms suddenly had to figure out a way to become profitable. Many went out of business, but slowly, survivors started to show quarterly reports with a lot less red ink. Now, a new study has found that the aggregate financial results from various online retailers shows that the overall industry is now profitable - not just a few of the bigger players. One of the main reasons for this unexpected profitability? The increasing use of paid search advertising. E-commerce sites have slashed their marketing budgets and have ditched costly (and useless) banner ads in favor of much more targeted text ads on search sites like Google."