Motorola (NYSE: MOT) pre-announced a second quarter shortfall and also indicated that the rest of 2007 will be difficult and non-profitable. The stock will more than likely be dead money for the next six to nine months as this company has yet to find its footing.

I wrote back on June 26th that Motorola would probably miss this quarter and perhaps the year. It has come true. Motorola is a company that is in trouble as it cannot make an operating profit on almost $9 billion of quarterly revenues. Motorola is attacking the European markets with mid-level product that is constantly under pricing pressures. The Motorola approach in Asia and China has been to penetrate the low-end of the cellular market which is also contending with evaporating margins.

Motorola had success with the Razr line-up of phones but has yet to come up with a killer-replacement phone and the Razr cycle has worn out its welcome.CEO Ed Zander, rightfully, is under huge pressure to perform as this once bellwether company is facing not only a tough 2007 but a challenging 2008. With Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone capturing market share and headlines, Motorola is hard pressed to maintain its competitive positioning in the United States.

Motorola's stock closed at $17 yesterday and I see little to any near term prospects of it lifting higher. Motorola stock may start to be interesting at the $14 level, but not until then.

Georges Yared is the Chief Investment Strategist of Yared Investment Research.

Amazon.com investors are not pleased. Not at all. The internet retailer had major strategy changes this quarter with the embittered breakup with longtime partner Toysrus.com, and that combined with other factors to send net income down 58% from the year-ago quarter. Quarterly net income was $22 million, five cents per diluted share, versus $50 million, or 12 cents per share, in 2005. Sales, however, were good and within Amazon's forecasted range at $2.14 billion, up 22%.

Investors didn't seem to care much that sales showed such a strong growth rate, or that Amazon.com had, indeed, warned of ill effects of the end of the Toysrus.com partnership. After falling 72 cents in intraday trading ahead of the earnings release, shares were down another $3.47, or 12.2% on the day, in after-hours trading a few minutes after the announcement.

Amazon.com's 52-week low is $30, only a few pennies less than where the stock stands in after-hours.

Second quarter earnings exceeded expectations, with $2.455 billion in total revenue for the quarter (up 77% year-over-year) and $2.33 earnings per diluted share. After the bell, investors seemed happy; the stock was recovering from its intraday drop of $11.88, although as the minutes ticked by, the recovery was less and less.

It will be interesting to watch as investors digest the report, and listen to the earnings conference call. I've just started listening, and it's a numbers-rattle-off right now.

4:41 p.m. -- Sergey Brin begins the call, talking about the details of the earnings report. He says that the company noted earlier that capex would be higher, as a percentage, than it was last year, and it continues to be, up to 12% of revenue from 10% last year -- that's a lot of dollars given the huge growth in revenue. Headcount was up over 1,000 people, mostly in Ireland and India.

4:44 p.m. -- Larry Page takes over to talk about the warmer, fuzzier parts of the business. He focuses on Google Checkout, which is hoped to help advertisers generate more sales. He says that Google's option will help advertisers capture those customers who abandon their shopping carts, and generate higher clickthroughs. He says they are "generating healthy adoption rates" including Bluefly, Starbucks, and more.

4:48 p.m. -- Page thinks this is one of the most exciting products the company has generated to date, and "hopes" it will bring revenues. Naturally investors want this: 99% of Google's revenues, healthy as they are, are still coming from search advertising.

Google's earnings exceeded expectations for the second quarter, with $721.1 million on revenue of $2.455 billion. At first, the investors were exultant, and the stock recovered from its $11.88 fall on the day.

However, Sheldon Liber and I have been eagerly watching the stock progress in after-hours trading. The stock had almost reversed all its losses for the day a few minutes after the announcement, then dropped again by about 4:45 p.m. But by the time we published this post at 4:50, the losses had once again been mostly erased and the stock hovered around $394. We'll see how the call affects investors' feelings...

With great results on the earnings release, a few minutes ago, I was excited to hear the whole glowing report by Meg Whitman & team. I tuned in early.

Evidently, it's not a good idea to tune in early. I kept refreshing my page only to miss the first 14 minutes. So I'll be following up and re-capping when the webcast is archived later tonight. In the meantime...

5:14 p.m. -- CEO Meg Whitman is excitedly talking about PayPal when I tune in, and quickly goes on to Skype, talking about the free SkypeOut North America promotion, saying that U.S. and Canada downloads tripled and "revenue has accelerated past pre-campaign levels" despite the free nature of the campaign.

5:18 p.m. -- "Never stand still, adjust with lightning speed to whatever comes our way," is the strategy, says Meg. She also points out the many doubters along the way -- "why does eBay need a bank?" and "what is eBay doing with Skype?" -- but says that doubters have now been quashed. She's a really excellent speaker, eBay's speechwriter should get a bonus.

5:22 p.m. -- Now time for CFO Bob Swan. I think all CFO's should be named "Bob." He begins to rattle off the financial results. User growth continues to be strong, with 10 million new users in the quarter. Auction listings showed a year-over-year growth of 35%, and 106 million new listings in the stores, total. That's 3.1 million new users in the U.S., and U.S. listings grew 15% (guess most of that growth is coming outside the U.S.).

Ahead of the investor conference call starting in a few minutes, eBay announced second-quarter revenue of $1.411 billion and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of $0.24. Wall Street will be entirely unsurprised, as this is exactly what analysts predicted.

Will it be enough to turn around today's (and, in fact, this year's) stock malaise? It seems as if investors are relieved; in after hours trading, the stock has recovered the day's losses and more, currently at $27.24 in after hours, up from a close of $25.93. Could this be the end of eBay's slide? Tune into the live coverage of the earnings conference call in a few minutes to learn more.

Investors are a hopeful kind of bird. Yahoo! stock, along with many in the tech sector, has been in the doldrums as of late. Earnings are coming out in about an hour, though, and this makes the investor bird preen its feathers and buy in advance of the announcement. Despite intraday lows that were down signficantly from yesterday's close, Yahoo! ended the day at $32.17, up 33 cents or 1.04%.

But Piper Jaffray, among other analysts, are predicting good things, including the consensus 11 cents per share profit (down from 13 cents in the year-ago quarter) and positive news in the search ad revenue department. Check back at 5 p.m. Eastern, when we'll be liveblogging the earnings report.