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Sun Microsystems recently confirmed that it expects to return to profitability in the second quarter, despite a slight drop-off in orders from the previous quarter. "Sun weeded out all the old stuff that would cause the company inventory headaches," Forrester principal analyst Carl Howe told the ...

Open source technology is cheap to use, comes with few frills -- and has yet to gain the popularity enjoyed by proprietary products from giants like Microsoft. Nevertheless, many companies are taking advantage of open source software's flexibility and low cost for use in e-business operations. Bu...

A recent study found that online advertising is holding its own compared with traditional advertising revenue. And analysts expect the current steady state will give way to growth as soon as economic news improves. "The areas that we see continuing to grow in terms of share of online advertising ...

Since launching its European auction site, Yahoo! has trailed far behind eBay. Rather than simply conceding to the competition, the company found a more lucrative strategy: It teamed up with its rival. EBay and Yahoo! Europe will pool their marketing resources to advertise eBay's sites via extens...

Despite a corporate spending downturn that has led to revenue and market capitalization problems for once high-flying Lucent, analysts and company officials agree that the telecom giant can stay in the game and possibly thrive over the long term. But while analysts said the company must shift som...

Providing more evidence that the IPO market for Internet offerings is slowly reviving, DVD rental site Netflix sold 5.5 million shares of its common stock at the top of its price range. "The company enjoys explosive revenue growth and is displaying good cost control," Morningstar.com IPO analyst ...

If you can hold your breath just a bit longer, demand for IT services will rebound. That is the shared conclusion of two new surveys -- one by research company IDC and the other a joint effort of research firm Gartner and financial services powerhouse Goldman Sachs. According to Gartner, an uptic...

Is online gaming a guaranteed winner? In the future, we all will spend our days at our computer terminals, playing video games over the Internet against people we've never met. That is the vision of those who have targeted online gaming as the next big thing on the Web. Although many assume that ...

Sun Microsystems has positioned itself to tackle the Linux market with a significant upgrade to its Solaris operating system. The new version of Solaris, which features enhanced built-in Linux compatibility, also includes a programming toolkit designed to simplify development of Linux-compatible app...

Apologizing for "inappropriate communications" among analysts during the tech stock boom of the 1990s -- but not admitting wrongdoing -- Merrill Lynch has reached a $100 million settlement with New York and other states. The company agreed to implement several changes in how it is organized inter...

Microsoft is preparing to launch a $10 million marketing campaign and software tools to lure users who are unhappy with AOL's services. MSN product manager Lisa Gurry told the E-Commerce Times that many AOL users have switched to MSN "because they were tired of the over-simplified, over-commercializ...

Microsoft may have thought it could make software upgrades easier for customers -- and secure a steady revenue stream -- by mandating an automatic upgrade plan for applications and operating system software, but the company should rethink its strategy, analysts said. "The ill will generated with ...

The U.S. Copyright Office has rejected Webcasting royalty rates proposed by the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. The panel has been working to determine what rates would satisfy the concerns of record companies without shutting down the nascent Webcasting industry. Concerned with the potentia...

Every now and then, just for kicks, I type the Kozmo.com URL into my browser. I'm not sure what I expect will happen, but the result is always the same: nothing. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but given the comebacks of late -- including Furniture.com and MotherNature.com -- isn't it about tim...

Less than a year after its controversial debut, travel site Orbitz has announced plans to raise as much as $125 million through an initial public offering. "This is an awfully fast IPO filing," Morningstar.com analyst David Kathman told the E-Commerce Times. "Orbitz may be trying to strike while ...