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U.S. e-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2001 dropped 1.8 percent from the previous quarter, the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Thursday. However, not all news from the online sector is discouraging. Year-over-year e-commerce sales actually grew 24.7 percent, ac...

Online postage company Stamps.com said Friday that it cut about 25 percent of its workforce as part of a plan to reduce costs and turn a profit, and that chief financial officer Ken McBride will take over the chief executive post. McBride, who has been with the company since April 1999 and has se...

Bigger. Flashier. More intrusive. The advertising industry is willing to try anything and everything to get people to pay more attention to their Internet advertising. But if you hit the right note, any size ad can be effective. In other words, it's not about the size of the banner, it's about wh...

According to its main financial backer, Valassis Communications, online coupon provider Save.com will cease operations due to insufficient funding and a lack of advertisers. "A Web site that attracts consumers who are deal-seekers does not appeal to manufacturers," Forrester research director Rob...

Another Net appliance has made an early exit. This time it's Sony's eVilla Net Entertainment Center, which lasted just two months. According to Sony, the eVilla online service is scheduled to end on September 13th. eVilla customers were mailed a letter from Sony the week of August 27th detail...

The back-to-school shopping season might not be the biggest quake on the e-commerce Richter scale -- holiday gift-giving tends to rock the e-tail world more. Even so, the return to the classroom provides a welcome excuse for e-tailers to convince consumers to shake off the summer doldrums and sta...

As the expiration date for a rival takeover bid from PC Connection approaches, Fry's Electronics is back in the running to acquire struggling e-tailer Outpost.com, Fry's disclosed Wednesday. According to a filing by Fry's with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), buyout talks with...

Internet brokerage E*Trade said late Wednesday that it plans to buy market maker Dempsey & Company for US$173.5 million in cash and stock, and that it will consolidate its existing operations in order to diversify its revenue sources and cut costs. The restructuring, which E*Trade described a...

eBay said Wednesday that it reached a deal with Columbia TriStar Television Distribution, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, to produce a daily syndicated television show focusing on "the stories behind the millions of items traded daily on eBay and other venues." "To the extent that eBa...

The ever-expanding dot-com graveyard added a new name to its roster over the weekend. Flooz.com, the company that dealt in Internet-based currency and electronic gift certificates, quietly closed its virtual doors. Among its other difficulties, Flooz was, according to early reports, a victim of ...

Ford Motor Company heard from the U.S. Court of Appeals this week that its pre-owned vehicles Web site was operating in violation of Texas state laws. Working in partnership with auto dealers in Houston and in five other U.S. cities, Ford's Pre-Owned Showroom violated the Texas Motor Vehicle Comm...

Firing back at critics who contend that its advertising software uses illegal delivery tactics, Gator.com said Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against one of its most vociferous detractors, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), asking a U.S. court to declare that the trade group's charges are ...

Most financial-service Web sites fail to give users appropriate options for protecting the use of their personal financial information, according to a report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). The study found that mortgage companies and big banks are t...

Traffic to Internet-only banks is decreasing, while multichannel financial institutions have watched their online activity double over the past year, according to a report released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix. The number of visitors at the Web sites of banks that also have a brick-and-morta...

The latest dot-com job cut numbers released Tuesday by Challenger, Gray, & Christmas (CGC) paint a rather mixed picture of the Internet economy. On the one hand, dot-com layoffs in August fell 44 percent from July, to reach a 12-month low of 4,899. On the other, the number of dot-com firms th...