Articles by Lori Enos

Months after the slowdown hit the U.S. economy, a consensus has failed to materialize on which came first: the dot-com shakeout chicken or the economic downturn egg? "The implosion of tech companies and the evaporation of their funding is more a symptom of the economic slowdown than a cause," Bob Austrian of Banc of America Securities told the E-Co...

Universal Music Group stepped forward Monday to announce that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire subscription music service EMusic (Nasdaq: EMUS) in an all-cash deal worth approximately US$23 million. "We feel that EMusic complements Universal's other digital and Internet initiatives, and we look forward to joining with them to offer ...

The Internet promises a number of benefits to consumers and the economy, but there is "a real danger" that those benefits will not be realized if consumers identify the Internet with fraud operators, a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) official testified Thursday "The boom in e-commerce has opened up fertile ground for fraud," said Hugh Stevenson...

Continuing a raucous week in the online music sector, subscription music download service EMusic (Nasdaq: EMUS) announced Thursday that it has signed a non-binding letter of intent to be acquired by a "major publicly held media company," in an all-cash transaction worth approximately US$24 million Although Redwood City, California-based EMusic did ...

More than a year after the first salvo was fired between the recording industry and digital downloading freeloaders, the music industry is still trying to develop a subscription-based service that rivals Napster in popularity "Napster is alone in being a recognized [digital download] service," Webnoize analyst Matt Bailey told the E-Commerce Times....

The future of e-commerce will include beefed-up portals, dubbed "e-commerce brokers," that will offer more than a list of links and a passive handoff to online retailers, according to a report released Thursday by Forrester Research The report, "eCommerce Brokers Arrive," predicted an imminent shakeout of shopping intermediaries -- sites that aggre...

Despite an accelerating rate of e-tailer closures, e-commerce spending in Canada increased by 73.4 percent in 2000 over 1999, according to a study released Tuesday by Statistics Canada (Statscan), Canada's census agency The increase occurred even though five Canadian companies shut down their e-tailing operations for every two that started selling ...

Thousands of UK e-tailers may be breaking the law by failing to comply with the Data Protection Act, a report released Tuesday by the London Chamber of Commerce (LCC) said The Data Protection Act of 1998 requires that Web sites inform visitors how information that visitors provide will be used, and that Web sites keep data secure and refrain from s...

Troubled Internet consultancy MarchFirst (Nasdaq: MRCH) announced Monday that it will lay off 1,700 employees, or 30 percent of its staff The company also said that it was selling some of its operations to Divine (Nasdaq: DVIN), a Chicago-based Web enterprise software and services firm, in a deal that could be worth up to US$120 million....

Consumers spent US$3.4 billion online in February -- 13.3 percent more than the $3 billion spent online in January -- according to numbers released Thursday by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Forrester Research "In light of the economic slowdown, we are pleased to see that the Internet continues to thrive as a consumer shopping channel," F...

A report released Wednesday by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economics professor denounces Orbitz, the controversial Internet travel site set to open this summer, predicting that it will become a "market power ringmaster" that will force U.S. consumers to pay US$183 million more annually for airfare MIT professor Jerry Hausman said ...

The number of dot-com job losses fell for the second month in a row, dropping 18 percent in March, according to a report released Tuesday by the job placement firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas (CGC) From July through January, tech job cuts rose steadily, peaking at 12,828, CGC said. In March, however, 9,533 Internet jobs disappeared, following F...

Hours after saying it had made an offer for the assets of bankrupt e-tailer eToys, children's book publisher Scholastic (Nasdaq: SCHL) announced late Monday that it would not submit a bid after all The company said that it "concluded that the acquisition of selected eToys assets did not meet Scholastic's threshold for accelerating or reducing the c...

The U.S. Customs Service and the Moscow City Police cooperated to shut down a Moscow-based website called Blue Orchid that was selling child pornography, the agency said Monday As a result of the investigation, 15 arrest warrants were executed in the U.S., and four Americans and five Russians were arrested, Customs said. The agency also said that t...

Consumer confidence in e-commerce took center stage Friday and Saturday when the European Commission (EC) met in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the "eEurope 2002 Action Plan." Acknowledging that "business and citizens in the European Union have been slower in embracing this New Economy than [those] in the United States," the EC said that e-commerce i...

The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office filed suit against a brick-and-click computer retailer Thursday for allegedly selling thousands of computer systems to U.S. consumers while failing to deliver the products ordered. The suit, filed in Commonwealth Court in Pennsylvania, also maintains that Computer Personalities Systems of Buck County and ...

The news that a Brooklyn, New York busboy allegedly stole the identities of nearly 200 of America's most rich and famous people, bilking them for millions of dollars with information gleaned via free Internet access at local libraries, is a signal that the personal data stored on the Internet remains a breeding ground for credit card crime -- despite all assurances to the contrary...

Online purchasing could save firms up to 4 percent this year and 8 percent by 2003, but those cost savings will come with a hefty price tag, according to a report released Wednesday by Forrester Research The report, "What Does eMarketplace Buying Cost?" said that over the next five years, business purchasers will spend an estimated US$5.4 million t...

The longer that business-to-business (B2B) firms are online the more likely it is that they will achieve profitability, according to a study released Tuesday by ActivMedia Research The study revealed that 32 percent of all B2B companies currently online are turning a profit. However, 46 percent of the B2B firms that have been online for three or mo...

A shareholders' lawsuit was filed against Amazon.com and three of its directors Tuesday in a Seattle, Washington federal court by a local law firm, alleging that the e-tail giant unlawfully inflated its stock prices by disseminating false and misleading information about its financial condition. The suit also charges that Amazon founder and chief ...