Archive

Despite being in the grips of a regional shakeout of its own, Asian business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce is growing at a rate of 100 percent a year, according to a report released Thursday by the Boston Consulting Group. Dot-coms continue to fall by the wayside in Asia, BCG reported, but establi...

More than 20 million Europeans visited business and finance sites from their homes in May, according to research released Wednesday by Jupiter MMXI. The Internet research firm said that most Internet banking and finance consumers were visiting local brands offering online banking, financial info...

Internet consultant Organic has joined the growing list of former dot-com high fliers facing a Nasdaq delisting. Late Tuesday, the San Francisco, California-based company said it is seeking a hearing from a Nasdaq panel to avoid delisting. Organic shares have not traded at the Nasdaq's minimum bi...

News item: A startup-up Internet pure-play retailer announces it is giving away 10 bucks to every customer who shops at its site. A story from mid-1999? Guess again. This item is from a week ago. Right in the middle of 2001. So is the purveyor of this promotion some kind of e-commerce Rip Van Win...

Staples is proceeding with plans to buy back its online unit and fold it into its traditional retail operations, after agreeing to settle a suit with shareholders who alleged that company managers would reap unfair profits from the deal. As part of the settlement announced late Monday, Staples sai...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Monday that Netpliance, which manufactures a low-cost Internet access and e-mail device, has agreed to settle charges that its sales and billing practices violated a host of federal laws. According to the agency, Netpliance employed deceptive adve...

There's a case brewing in Louisiana that may blow the lid off virtual casinos everywhere. A U.S. appeals court faces the question of whether a trial court in Louisiana was correct when it ruled in February that the 1961 Wire Act does not apply to all forms of Internet gambling, but only sports wage...

Mirroring a move made by Amazon.com two weeks ago, Barnesandnoble.com announced Monday that it will offer free shipping for consumers purchasing two or more items. In a jab at Amazon, which raised the prices on some items when it offered to pick up the shipping tab for customers, Barnesandnoble.c...

Hoping to head off the sharing of movies on the Internet before it reaches Napster-like proportions, seven major film studios have filed a lawsuit in California against Johnny Deep and several business partners backing the Internet file-swapping network Aimster. Emily Kuttner, spokesperson for t...

Europe quietly took a giant step forward last week, moving a bit closer to the goal of letting consumers shop online without borders. In a reversal of its previous stance, the European Commission announced that it is softening its position on who has the legal authority to govern international e-...

Today's e-commerce industry could not have been built without the interconnecting threads of partnerships, affiliate programs, marketing deals and other alliances. But the Web remains vulnerable in spots. eBay partnered with Eppraisals.com, only to see that site go under two months later. Investm...

Any continued weakness in the European economy could have a major impact on the demand for information technology (IT) products and services over the next three years, according to a report released Monday by IDC. The Framingham, Massachusetts-based research firm said that with indicators pointin...

Monster.com parent TMP Worldwide said Friday it will acquire competitor HotJobs in a US$460 million deal that brings the top two Internet job search sites under the same roof. The deal, which has already been endorsed by both boards of directors, is expected to close sometime in the fourth quart...

London-based online travel company Ebookers said Monday it has moved some operations to India, and also opened a customer service call center there, as part of a plan to cut costs and break even by the first quarter of 2002. Ebookers said it will outsource some functions to a call-center company ...

If the first era of e-commerce was all about survival of the fittest, with all participants operating independently and competing for market share, the new era of online selling may have more to do with collaboration. Enter NetChoice, the recently established lobbying group that was formed to wa...