Amazon.com Inc.’s (ticker symbol AMZN) earnings announcement has been released, showing quarterly profits plunged 33% as the online retailer spent ferociously to build more fulfillment centers and expand its technology offerings, becoming the latest Web company to report rising costs as the Internet proves to be an expensive arena to do business.

The Seattle-based Internet retailer posted earnings of $201 million in its fiscal first quarter, down from $299 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 38% to $9.86 billion from a year ago. Amazon’s results were marked by ballooning operating expenses, which rose 42% from a year ago, and rapid hiring that boosted headcount by 45% over the past year to 37,900 employees. Operating margins for the quarter were reported at 3.3%, down from 5.5% for the same quarter a year ago.

Amazon is the latest Web company to report rising spending over the past few weeks. Earlier this month, Google Inc. posted surging costs as its operating expenses—what it spends on salaries, marketing and research and the like—jumped 54% from a year earlier. On Monday, Netflix Inc. also forecast increased costs as it moves to license more content for its streaming services. The rising spending shows that Web companies, even without much of the overhead of offline businesses, can still be expensive to run. Many of the companies have to spend furiously to keep up in hiring and infrastructure, and to innovate in new technologies, especially faced with a new crop of fleet-footed start-ups such as Facebook Inc. and others.

Amazon stock is currently trading at $189.70, up nearly 4% from its’ close yesterday of $182.30.