Easy question for investors/finance people (i'm calculating earnings per share)

[hanzj]

Hi,
I'm stumped by what should be an easy question for finance-type people or investors.

I'm trying to practice finding a company's earnings per share (EPS) and its price-earnings ratio (P/E ratio).

I'm practicing on Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN).

According to the latest quarterly financial report (For quarter ended June 2011; see 10-Q here (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=IROL-secToc&TOC=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2 RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDExOTMxMjUtMTEtMTk3ODIzL3RvYy9w YWdl&ListAll=1&sXBRL=1)) Amazon's:
--q2 income is $191-million;
--number of common shares is 448 million
So EPS is
0.426339
The 10-Q confirms my EPS answer; the 10-Q says basic EPS is 0.42.
So that's correct.

But why does the Google Finance page for Amazon (http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN) say that Amazon's EPS is 2.27? If you click the grey-colored EPS, a box pops us with a definition of EPS:
"The net income per share according to the most recent quarterly report."

Am I not using the most recent quarterly report?
Why the difference?

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for the help.

[oldfred]

I always thought earnings per share was an annual number unless listed otherwise.
So I would expect the 2.27 to be the last 4 quarters. Often I expect just a full calendar year's number, but quarterly updates if labeled as such is find. Or EPS for 2010 were $X.xx per share.

Some companies do not use calendar years, so a company years may not match a calendar year also.

[LowSky]

depends on the math, especially the value point your using.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnings_per_share