Archive

Nowhere are IT budgets leaner than in the retail sector, where tight margins strictly curtail technology spending. However, a recent report from IDC indicates that the retail IT market will grow rapidly over the next few years and could be worth $40 billion by 2006. Leading retailers are expected...

The first wave of online grocery stores is all but gone, but one year after Webvan secured its title as the biggest dot-bomb ever, the online grocery segment is slowly reinventing itself. Brick-and-mortar supermarkets are cooking up some early success with hybrids of the original model. Indeed, i...

Dot-com incubator CMGI said it has negotiated to end a 15-year, $114 million deal that called for its corporate name and logo to adorn the stadium where the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots play football. Razor and battery maker Gillette will take over the naming rights. While the move ca...

Everyone knows that stock investments are long-term propositions, that if you buy and hold, you are likely to see better returns from Wall Street than from your neighborhood bank. But amid all of that long-range outlook talk, companies are forced to come forward every three months to report on ho...

Yahoo! has acquired a 15 percent share of European mobile phone service provider Sonera zed Ltd. Although the two companies are not disclosing financial terms of the deal, they soon will begin delivering co-branded mobile services across Europe. During the first phase of the partnership, the duo ...

Internet market research is designed to be evergreen, so that clients who buy advice about online customer service or traffic-building tactics can use that advice later. Typically, Internet market research is so geared toward business goals that companies use large doses of analyst insight when pl...

Media outlets are jumping on the paid-content bandwagon, with national and regional players alike announcing plans to charge visitors for online access to print and broadcast content. Freedom Communications -- a Florida newspaper publisher -- is the latest to join the for-fee parade. The group's ...

Dot-com layoffs awakened from a midsummer slumber, more than doubling in July to 1,750 lost jobs, according to a Challenger, Gray and Christmas report. That makes July the third-worst month so far this year for Internet-related layoffs, behind May, which had 2,078 cuts, and January, when 1,802 we...

In the early days, when profit was just a vague promise that no one seemed to care too much about, e-commerce companies tried nearly every trick in the book, no matter how outrageous or costly, to build their customer base. Online retailers have learned that buyers are much more serious about e-c...

Qwest Communications has agreed to sell its ASP (application service provider) assets to Corio, Inc. for $15 million in a deal that should be completed in late September. Under terms of the agreement with Qwest, Corio picks up the ASP operations of the telecommunications company's Qwest CyberSolut...

In a strong move to execute its new storage software strategy for Linux, Veritas Software has purchased $1 million worth of patents from Storage Engine. Earlier this week, Veritas outlined the next phase of its strategy to lead the Linux storage market. As a first step, the company has released c...

Onetime e-commerce software powerhouse PurchasePro has found itself caught up in dual probes into the accounting practices at AOL, as deals made at the height of the dot-com boom are examined by the Securities and Exchange Commission. PurchasePro has confirmed that documents relating to its now-e...

In its infancy, e-commerce was all about building a Web site, attracting "eyeballs" and capturing orders. But within a few years, with millions invested and no profitability in sight, many e-tailers were forced to close their virtual doors. Now that e-commerce has moved beyond the shakeout stage,...

EBay is reportedly close to a deal to sell its Butterfields division, probably for considerably less than the $260 million price tag the auction house carried in early 1999, when eBay set out to leverage its real-world auction assets. The sale would constitute recognition by eBay of the premise t...

In an attempt to beef up its online music service, Pressplay has unveiled version 2.0, which, according to the company, will give users greater freedom in listening to, downloading and storing music. Like most online music services sponsored by record labels, Pressplay has drawn criticism from li...