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As dot-com executives continue playing their version of musical chairs, the question many investors are asking now is: what happens when the music stops? Will these "new leaders" breathe new life into stagnant e-commerce companies, or will they simply be the new faces of failure? "I think it wi...

Brick-and-click toy store KB Toys announced Friday that it has purchased the Web site, name and logo of defunct toy e-tailer eToys at a bankruptcy auction for approximately US$3.35 million. Acquiring the eToys name will allow KB Toys to profit from the millions that eToys spent on online and off...

To say that George Shaheen got a golden parachute when he dashed out the chief executive officer's door, leaving struggling home grocer Webvan behind, would be the understatement of the year. The parachute glitters even more when compared to the company's other fortunes. More than 800 people h...

Brick-and-click grocer PDQuick.com has been acquired by Web delivery venture WhyRunOut.com in an all-cash transaction, WhyRunOut chief executive officer Dan Frahm said Friday. Gartner Group research director Geri Spieler told the E-Commerce Times that acquiring PDQuick and its small subset of b...

This is the story of a man who fell to earth and landed in a field of cash -- soft, comforting, fortuitous cash. His name is George T. Shaheen, and in case I forgot to mention it, he fell with the aid of a parachute. Some might say the parachute was golden.

Business-to-business (B2B) site Egarden has closed, parent company U.S. Home & Garden (Nasdaq: USHG) announced Wednesday. The company said that Egarden would keep a skeleton staff to maintain the infrastructure of the site, while U.S. Home & Garden evaluates strategic alternatives, includ...

Three out of every four partnerships linking a brick-and-mortar retailer with an e-commerce player in the past four years has been successful, according to a study released Thursday by McKinsey & Company. In fact, McKinsey, which looked closely at 700 deals announced since 1997, found that ...

Most consumers, when faced with the task of comparison shopping for a desired item, do not have time to run all over town looking to save a few dollars. Still, saving money is important to most consumers, and that's where the Internet was supposed to fill the gap. Where real-world shoppers feel a s...

As the Web becomes an increasingly global marketplace, U.S. based companies will need to create multicultural, multilingual Web sites in order to compete, according to a report released Thursday by Aberdeen Group. The report found that some big companies are already taking steps to "globalize" ...

Dashing cold water on recent encouraging news for the e-tail sector, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported Wednesday that online retail sales in the United States fell by 19.3 percent during the first quarter of 2001. During the quarter, online retailers rang up $6.99 billion in sales, down f...

Urban delivery e-tailer Webvan said Wednesday that it will pay former chief executive officer George T. Shaheen US$375,000 per year for the rest of his life as part of a supplemental retirement package negotiated before Shaheen began his employment with the company. According to Webvan spokesperson ...

Pick up virtually any major media publication covering the dot-com shakeout of the past year and you're likely to come across a slight variation on the following theme: "the New Economy was a bust." But was the New Economy really a complete hoax? Many economists actually consider e-commerce to be...

Two European subsidiaries of eBay were sued by watchmaker Rolex over alleged auctions of counterfeit Rolex watches, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made Tuesday by the Internet auctioneer. The suit, which was filed April 25th in the regional court of...

Poor customer service in the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce sector threatens to undermine trust in the fast-growing industry, according to a study released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI). Much like their consumer counterparts, B2B customers expect rapid response to thei...

The overriding message is certainly true: Leading members of Congress are telling President George W. Bush that truly global e-commerce is necessary for a strong U.S. economy. No arguments there. But the next step is one that should be taken with great care: Bush is being urged to jump into t...