Amazon

The S&P 500's P/E is headed for a 3-year high. Not Apple's.

Apple is the largest slice of the 500 and it's one of only three stocks whose P/E shrank

FORTUNE -- Apple (AAPL), Oracle (ORCL) and EMC (EMC).

Those are the only three companies in the S&P 500 whose price-to-earnings ratio did not grow over the past 90 days, according to a Seeking Alpha piece posted Monday by someone or something called Pendulum.

The other 497 companies have all seen their valuations increase to MORE

Rakuten: The biggest e-commerce site you haven't heard of

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani heads one of the oldest and largest e-commerce sites in the world. He stopped by Fortune to talk about its unique model, plans for expansion and its battle with Amazon in the global market.

By Omar Akhtar, reporter

FORTUNE --  Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of the Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten stopped by the Fortune offices to promote his new book Marketplace 3.0: Rewriting The Rules Of Borderless Business, MORE

Chart of the day: Amazon beats Samsung in U.S. tablet sales

According to ComScore, Kindle Fire outsells Samsung's Galaxy tablets 4 to 1 in the U.S.

FORTUNE -- One of the surprises in ComScore's chart-packed Mobile Future in Focus "webinar" Wednesday was the relative sizes of the orange Amazon (AMZN) and red Samsung bands in the chart above.

Apple (AAPL) maintained its position as the No. 1 tablet manufacturer, but in battle for dominance among the Android tablet makers in the U.S. market -- MORE

Video: Bill Maher on Apple as 'doomed doomed doomed'

"They sold 48 million iPhones, 23 million iPads... Their slaves could barely keep up!"

FORTUNE -- Comedian Bill Maher had fun last week mocking some recent Apple (AAPL) headlines:

He might have made a stronger point if he'd had his facts straight. (Apple just had a $54 billion quarter, MORE

We know why Apple makes computers. But why Google?

Chart of the week: Horace Dediu follows the money

FORTUNE -- Asymco's Horace Dediu, the master of the tech industry informational graphic, outdid himself with the set of bar charts he posted Friday comparing the revenue and operating income of Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Samsung and Amazon (AMZN).

The impetus for "Bits v. Bytes: Follow the money" was the announcement last week of Google's first fully branded hardware product, a MORE

Chart of the day: Apple tops Samsung in mobile ad share

At the end of 2012, Apple still led with a 31.2% share. Samsung was second with 22.3%

FORTUNE -- Millennium Media (MM), the No. 3 mobile advertising platform after Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), issued its 2012 year in review report Friday. A few highlights:

Although it lost market share in 2012 in terms of the number of smartphones and tablets sold, Apple is still the No. 1 manufacturer in Millennium's ad MORE

Google spent $18M lobbying D.C. in 2012. Apple spent $2M

While Mountain View stepped up its political efforts, Cupertino cut back

FORTUNE -- The last time we looked at Silicon Valley's lobbying efforts, Google (GOOG) was the big spender and Apple (AAPL) the piker. (See For every $1 Google spends lobbying, Apple spends 10¢.)

That hasn't changed much in the past nine months. In fact, Google increased its political spending in 2012 -- a Presidential election year -- by nearly 90%, while Apple MORE

Why Japanese readers don't like e-books

Japan has some of the fastest internet connections in the world, but physical media such as books and DVDs still remain popular.

By Michael Fitzpatrick

FORTUNE -- Despite Japan's "default-setting-for-the future" status, coined by Sci-fi writer William Gibson, time on this rocky archipelago appears to be headed backwards. Kerosene is replacing nuclear energy; deflation, not inflation, is still rife; and, publishers are clinging energetically to print when, in neighboring South Korea, MORE

Chart of the day: Apple as the world's No. 1 PC maker

This assumes you believe that iPads and Kindle Fires are personal computers

FORTUNE -- Market researchers at Canalys made headlines Wednesday when they reported that Apple (AAPL) was the world's No. 1 personal computer manufacturer in Q4 2012 with shipments of 27 million PCs -- almost twice as many as No. 2 Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

It was a finding that flew in the face of the "Apple is doomed" meme, and only makes sense if you MORE

eBay is back!

Supercharged by PayPal, the e-commerce company and its stock are red-hot. Watch out, Amazon!

FORTUNE -- "I'd like to take you on a journey." A group of 2,500 eBay employees is assembled at the San Jose Civic, a concert venue a few miles from company headquarters. Their boss, CEO John Donahoe, is onstage, asking them to reflect on their work. "Close your eyes," he urges in a deep baritone. "What is MORE