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Reporting a quarterly profit of US$2.2 billion, IBM handily beat Wall Street's expectations with its Q3 earnings. Impressive sales of its hardware and licensed software sales were the primary driver of the company's gains. The only cloudy note in the report was the decline in its services unit, whic...

Keynote Systems on Wednesday announced new indices tracking best-in-class e-commerce sites. The new indices track the speed and reliability from the end user perspective of 24 leading online retail sites across three categories: apparel, books and music, and electronics. Conducted by Keynote Competi...

Yahoo said softness in parts of the advertising market led to a 37 percent drop in quarterly profits and prompted a lower-than-expected forecast for the fourth quarter. The Web portal did say its new paid search ad delivery platform, known as Panama, was now up and running and on track to be fully o...

The rise of digital marketing has opened up a world of opportunity to win customers that goes well beyond search engine optimization, banner ads and link exchanges. This is due in part to the evolution of the Internet, which is sparking creative ideas that leverage new online platforms for guerilla ...

Google is planning to deploy a solar electricity system that will have a capacity of 1.6 megawatts at its famed million square foot headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. It will be the largest such installation on a corporate campus in the United States and one of the largest in the world, the compa...

The massive recall of Sony-made notebook PC batteries may be taking more of a financial toll on the company than initially expected. The company said Tuesday it may need to revise its financial forecasts. Sony is evaluating whether to adjust its previous forecast of US$1.1 billion in profit for the...

Yahoo Small Business, one of the most popular options for merchants to establish their first online presence, started to roll out a major upgrade Monday, revamping the way it gets merchants set up to focus more on immediate sales results. The e-commerce platform, known as Yahoo Merchant Solutions, g...

Two private equity firms, The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners, jointly announced on Monday that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Open Solutions in a transaction valued at over US$1.3 billion. Under terms of the agreement, The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partner...

Sirius Satellite Radio said Monday it would launch a Web-only version of its subscription satellite service, a significant step for the company as it tries to generate enough revenue to earn back major investments in on-air talent. Sirius will launch Sirius Internet Radio, which it described as a CD...

Already facing tens of millions of dollars in costs associated with replacing recalled laptop batteries for several major PC makers, Sony now faces the prospect that some of these companies will try to recoup additional damages, such as compensation for lost business. Toshiba said Monday it is curre...

Every e-mail, ad and search engine marketing placement entices a click by making a promise. Most of the time that promise is immediately broken and the brand behind it is tarnished. Marketers work very hard at enticing that first response. We treat the click as the objective and consider the battle ...

Newly passed gaming laws have spurred an exodus of UK-based Internet companies from the lucrative United States market, with major sites selling off or shutting down their operations. Sportingbet said it agreed to sell its U.S. operations to Jazette Enterprises, an Antigua-based corporation, for US$...

Backing off earlier suggestions that antitrust concerns in the European Union could delay the launch of its next-generation Windows platform, Microsoft said Friday it would launch Windows Vista in Europe on schedule. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer personally told EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroe...

Many hedge funds charge extraordinarily high fees to the investor. Not only do they charge a base fee that can be augmented by churning the securities in the fund, but they also can charge a profit-participation fee based upon a healthy percentage of the fund's gains. To add insult to injury, the ac...

It wasn't so long ago that technological or economic reasons -- or both -- stood in the way of many people who aspired to launch a retail business online. That's changed drastically in a short span of time. Professional quality e-commerce hosting services, along with a growing range of easy-to-use ...