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With online payment company PayPal set for its IPO, analysts are optimistic about the company's prospects. "The signs are there that they will continue to be successful," Gartner analyst Avivah Litan told the E-Commerce Times. Litan expects the IPO to be strong, but not show "the wild kind of suc...

Whether they ply e-commerce in the travel, e-tail or auction sectors, most of the firms reporting strong 2001 earnings had one thing in common: gains in overseas sales that likely can sustain growth well into the future. "The tricky thing is you don't want to be there too early," Allyson Henry, E...

Amid new questions about the e-tail giant's cash position, Amazon.com CFO Warren Jenson told analysts and investors that sales will continue to grow while expenses will not, indicating that the company expects strong cash flow in the coming quarters. However, there is also renewed speculation tha...

With online commerce maturing and its highlights and lowlights well documented, a clear picture has emerged of what works and what does not. "We've seen a ruthless winnowing out of the good ideas from the bad ideas," Giga Information Group e-business analyst Andrew Bartels told the E-Commerce Tim...

Earlier this month, a subtle turn of events occurred in the B2B e-commerce arena that should have set off flashing red lights. E-business software giant SAP opted out of an e-procurement software licensing agreement with beleaguered partner Commerce One. The dissolution of the software pact highli...

Name-your-own-price e-tailer Priceline.com and online auction giant EBay have inked a deal that calls for Priceline to offer its travel booking engine on EBay. "It's completely sensible for EBay to partner with Priceline because EBay is all about auctions and value, and Priceline is also about au...

Sex sells. Online or off, that hasn't changed. But is adult content still the biggest moneymaker on the Web? Finding solid answers is difficult, but it seems clear that as e-commerce hits new milestones, Internet pornography no longer sits alone atop the heap of most-likely-to-succeed online busi...

No one expected all of the thousands of dot-coms that sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere, to survive. But how much consolidation is too much? Some of the giants plying the trade are eating up market share, taking it away from smaller competitors or just buying it up when necessary. Where is the ...

The number of dot-com job losses fell sharply in January, marking the third straight month of decline, according to a report released by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "The dot-com environment is now through much of the shakeout period," CEO John A. Challenger told the E-Comm...

Accusations of anticompetitive land-grabbing often befall category leaders like Microsoft and Wal-Mart. But e-tail juggernaut Amazon.com is no bully, according to analysts. "Amazon has been more of a partner than a competitor," Giga Information Group analyst Andrew Bartels told the E-Commerce Tim...

According to a new study by GartnerG2, online shoppers who want to download and watch movies over the Internet will have to wait until 2005 for the technology to hit the mainstream. "The biggest threat to any Internet video-on-demand service is to compete with free, and the sources of free will b...

Internet and media giant AOL Time Warner reported a net loss of US$1.8 billion for the fourth quarter, in line with analyst expectations. Nearly all of the loss was due to investment write-downs and merger costs. Not including investment losses, AOL's earnings increased 14 percent, from $2.4 bill...

I have seen the studies. I know that fraud is more prevalent online and that many people are wary of giving their credit card information to Internet merchants, but credit cards still seem like the best and most convenient option. With online payment systems, you must not only register and open a...

In a clear signal that online travel is on the mend, Expedia reported much stronger than expected earnings for the fourth quarter, with net income of US$5 million. Expedia chief financial officer Greg Stanger said the company expects to remain profitable in 2002. "In the events post-September 11t...

E-commerce grew by 12 percent in 2001 despite a sluggish U.S. economy and a dismal performance by offline retail, according to a new report from Forrester Research. Online sales in 2001 centered more than ever on the big-name players, especially during the holiday season. E-commerce also saw impo...