Archive

Do marketers have the right to flood the e-mail boxes of unsuspecting Internet users with unwanted e-mail, otherwise known as spam? One Washington state judge has effectively said yes -- and has sparked an instant debate about the constitutionality of laws that limit the use of spam.

According to venerable information resource Consumer Reports, auto sales over the Internet are fraught with pitfalls, problems and overhype.

Consumer Reports declared Thursday that online auto sales have not yet become a viable alternative to traditional outlets.

GTE CyberTrust was founded in 1996 after being split off from GTE's government services unit. Although the company is now primarily an international provider of extranet and e-commerce security solutions for private corporations, it has recently returned to government service.

German media giant Bertelsmann AG announced Friday that it is selling its 50 percent stake in AOL Europe and AOL Australia back to AOL in a stock deal worth between $6.5 billion and $8.25 billion (US$).

The Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) has joined the business-to-business (B2B) scramble by announcing plans to create an online marketplace for its members. GMA members generate U.S. sales of $460 billion (US$) per year and employ 2.5 million people in 50 states.

Internet grocer Peapod (Nasdaq: PPOD) received a resounding double blow Thursday, as the company announced that its highly respected CEO has resigned for health reasons and investors have yanked $120 million (US$) in planned equity financing off the table.

As optimistic reports from research firms hail the revenue potential of the fast-growing business-to-business (B2B) market, companies in nearly every industry are launching slick new Internet portals -- but many have failed thus far to rise above the functionality of plain old Web sites.

The U.S. Commerce Department announced yesterday that U.S. and European Union negotiators have finally reached a formal agreement on a much-needed deal that would guarantee privacy protection for EU member consumers who do business with U.S.-based e-tailers.

The old adage "don't believe everything you read" came roaring back into vogue this week when some up-to-the second investors lost 20 percent of their investments on outdated rumors of a partnership between eBay and Yahoo!.

Online consumers' privacy and protection are coming under close scrutiny in Washington, D.C. this week, as a number of government officials have apparently come to believe that the industry may never be able to regulate itself.

America Online's acquisition of Time Warner -- and its newly-announced strategy to generate e-commerce revenues with Warner Music -- has scuttled plans by a small AOL subsidiary to introduce a software product designed to distribute MP3-encoded music on the Internet for free.

The state of Virginia has enacted a controversial new Internet commerce law designed to affirm individual contracting parties' rights to set their own rules for contractual electronic transactions.

In an effort to keep its MSN.com portal competitive with its rivals, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced today that it is joining with a number of financial institutions to launch a Web site that will automate home mortgage transactions.

Open-source based software solutions provider TurboLinux has expanded its international operations by opening offices in the United Kingdom and Latin America.