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Less than a month after Napster said it would sell its assets to Bertelsmann in a deal worth $8 million, the online music swapping service has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Company executives stressed that Chapter 11 is not Napster's swan song. Instea...

The notebook war is heating up as mobile computers continue to steal market share from desktop machines. And in the latest chapter of the ongoing battle for notebook supremacy, Toshiba has toppled Dell in the worldwide market. Toshiba's global market notebook sales rose 19.3 percent in the first ...

The German government has decided to move its federal, state and local agency IT systems to Linux, citing reliability issues and a desire to reduce its dependence on Microsoft. Toward this goal, the country has signed an agreement with IBM, which will provide related hardware, software and services ...

USA Interactive has announced it will launch simultaneous buyout efforts that could give it full ownership of three major e-commerce players: Expedia.com, Ticketmaster and Hotels.com. In total, the deals could be worth $4.5 billion. USA said the takeover attempts should not be considered hostile....

Which companies are the new "rising startups" of e-commerce? A new breed of online retailer is making noise by attracting cost-conscious consumers who hope to purchase overstocks at deep discounts. These resellers include such sites as SmartBargains.com, Overstock.com and MoonBuzz.com. "These sit...

In a move to spur members of its affiliate program to sell more used goods, Amazon.com has begun paying affiliate Web sites a 2.5 percent referral fee on the sale of used items. "Amazon does not have to inventory or ship these used items," Yankee Group analyst Paul Ritter told the E-Commerce Time...

Despite concerns about privacy and fraud, recent U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) figures seem to confirm that consumers have gotten in the swing of shopping online, and the e-commerce cash register seems set to ring even more often in the future. The DOC recently reported that although U.S. onl...

IBM has sliced 2,000 jobs from its Global Services unit as it struggles to bring its financials more in line with forecasts. The latest round of cuts is part of a bigger layoff scheme that IBM began implementing this spring. In total, the company is expected to divest itself of 8,000 to 9,000 emp...

While the worst of times may be over for companies in business-to-business e-commerce, the sector remains unsteady and is likely to see more consolidation and survival-oriented alliances. "I don't think the shakeout is over," Forrester research director Laurie Orlov told the E-Commerce Times, not...

IBM has announced a five-year, $194 million agreement to provide electronic payments processor TSYS with hardware, software and other services. This is the largest deal in Columbus, Georgia-based TSYS' history. Under the terms of the deal, new IBM hardware will reduce the number of TSYS servers r...

In 2001, Epinions.com faced the same choice as scores of other dot-coms: Adapt or die. While the shopping information site, founded in 1999 by former Yahoo, Excite and Netscape executives and funded by some of the best-known investors in Silicon Valley, had attracted millions of repeat users, it ...

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has taken aim at the growing amount of spam plaguing New York consumers by filing suit against online marketing company MonsterHut and two of its executives. The suit accuses the company of misrepresenting its e-mail marketing service as an opt-in offering. ...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last week targeted another file-sharing service, Audiogalaxy, with its copyright protection campaign. The association filed a lawsuit against the Internet company, alleging that it encouraged users to copy and distribute copyrighted works and t...

Amazon.com is testing two new features -- catalog merchant pages and restaurant listings -- in an effort to generate additional revenue and drive more traffic to its Web site. The catalog pages encompass both consumer and professional products. The restaurant listings, being tested in Seattle, Bos...

The failure of catalog company Fingerhut is more than a blip on the radar screen. It represents a warning to those who would dive recklessly into online retail. How could Federated, the department store chain that bought Fingerhut, have thought that a small catalog retailer could provide an insta...