Online retail giant Amazon.com (AMZN) has a tendency of taking a quarterly loss so it can spend money on research and design. So it wasn't unexpected that the company reported a loss for the third quarter of 2014. But what did surprise Wall Street was the size of the loss.

Amazon reported a $544 million operating loss for the quarter, the largest in the company's history. This comes as a result of research into drones, new tablets and the failure of the Fire Phone.

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The third-quarter results translate to a loss of $0.95 per share, well below analyst expectations of a loss of $0.74 a share. The stock was down more than 10 percent in Friday's pre-market trading.

To put this into context, Amazon's operating loss was only $25 million for the same period last year. The company has been spending a lot this past year, but when investments don't pay off and the e-commerce side isn't picking up, it becomes hard for Amazon.

That said, Amazon.com continues to grow as an e-commerce brand, with sales up 20 percent this quarter to $20 billion. Amazon faced investor questions about Alibaba, but Amazon feels like their Western dominance can hold them off if they come to the U.S.

Amazon still hasn't given any specifics for the Kindle Fire tablets. The Kindle Fire HD is still reportedly the best selling tablet from Amazon, although we have no evidence to back this up, other than Amazon still aggressively pushing the tablet on its home-page.

The Fire TV got a shout-out on the earnings call, with Amazon saying it is the best-selling streaming box on Amazon. This beats Apple and Roku TV, both sold on Amazon's e-commerce platform.

TagsAmazon, Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com, Amazon Q3 earnings