Articles by Mary Hillebrand

Less than a week after Amazon.com muscled into the online shopping mall market with its new zShops feature, other online portals have begun to fight back with a variety of creative strategies One established shopping portal reacted immediately by lowering the price of its hosting contracts. Shortly after Amazon's announcement, Malls.Com declared th...

Pensacola, Florida-based G & L Internet Bank is set to launch a new service that will take advantage of Internet anonymity to help gay and lesbian banking customers avoid the "financial bashing" that founder Steven Dunlap argues is rampant in the business community. The new site, set to launch on October 11th, will offer Internet and telephone banking, personal and business checking and savings accounts, and a variety of related financial services...

House Policy Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-California) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) launched a bipartisan effort yesterday that calls upon the Clinton administration to support a permanent moratorium on global Internet e-commerce tariffs at November's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Washington Cox and Wyden, who have become...

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and SoftCom, Inc. announced a joint marketing agreement yesterday that will aim to make streaming video a source of revenue on the Internet and on TV The companies agreed to market SoftCom's patent-pending interactive video technology to owners of video footage and to technology companies who use Sun's Java lan...

Destination site AltaVista announced today that it has entered into a $65 million (US$) strategic alliance with healthcare content and e-commerce provider HealthCentral.com. Under the terms of the three-year deal, HealthCentral.com will be the exclusive healthcare content provider for the upcoming AltaVista Health Channel, subject to certain conditions the companies did not disclose...

Software vendor Corel Corp. (Nasdaq: CORL) and systems manufacturer EBIZ Enterprises, Inc. (OTC BB: EBIZ) have announced a strategic distribution agreement that is designed to help push the Linux open-source operating system (OS) into the consumer arena The agreement calls for EBIZ to load their low-end Element-L computer system series and Personal...

Industry giant Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) will unveil a new shopping center tomorrow that will allow any retailer, large or small, to pay a fee and market its wares from a personalized page within the Amazon.com site. The new center, to be known as "zShops," is designed to help Amazon.com customers find everything on their shopping lists without ever having to leave the Amazon.com Web site...

After an extended period of bickering and in-fighting, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers and Network Solutions, Inc. have reached a series of agreements that will privatize the Internet domain name registration system ICANN and Network Solutions will finally sign a registry agreement that will ...

Powered largely by an investment in community site GeoCities, Internet incubator CMGI (Nasdaq: CMGI) handily exceeded analysts' expectations yesterday by reporting record net income of $452.7 million (US$) or $4.74 per share for the fourth quarter. It had widely been expected that the company would report income of only $4.08 per share Fourth-quart...

American Express announced Friday that it has developed an exclusive online shopping program that will steer its cardholders to special deals with selected online merchants who accept the American Express Card The new Just 4 Cardmembers service is similar to the printed flyers that American Express and other card companies frequently enclose with m...

Online postage retailer E-Stamp Corp. has received a $5 million (US$) infusion of cash from two German companies and will use it to build on the 10,000 customers it has signed up since launching August 9th E-Stamp lined up Deutsche Post, the largest postal service in Europe, and Deutsche Telekom, the leading telecommunications service provider in G...

Borrowing a marketing lesson from the rapid rise of telephone calling cards, Cybermoola Inc. introduced a pre-paid debit card yesterday that is designed to let teens purchase items online without needing access to a parent or guardian's credit card Cybermoola is a secure online payment system that ensures that there are sufficient funds available b...

Online shopping mall OutletZoo.com is attempting to revolutionize the online shopping market by selling brand name merchandise through its proprietary "automatic price drop" system. The technology, which was developed by JEM Computers, drives prices as low as the market will bear through a virtual inverse of online auctions The site gives shoppers ...

Ohio government officials and private industry leaders will commit more than half a million dollars over the next three years to developing an e-commerce plan for the state. The program, which is intended to keep Ohio ahead of the e-commerce curve, will receive $450,000 (US$) in state funds More than 50 Ohio business, industry and government leader...

Name-your-price pioneer priceline.com will license its patented business method to WebHouse Club, Inc. and start marketing groceries to 11 million consumers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Priceline.com has warrants to become the majority stakeholder in the venture, which is backed by $65 million (US$) in venture capital. WebHouse Club, Inc...

JB Oxford & Co. (Nasdaq: JBOH), one of dozens of stock brokers that have added an online trading arm to their standard Wall Street trading services, has further expanded its purview by becoming an Internet service provider In its new "npower" service, Oxford packages unlimited free Internet access and electronic banking with its online trading serv...

Twinbays.com China has signed Beijing's largest department store operator to be a new vendor on the Twinbays auction site, bringing the credibility of a major name retailer and a slice of its Internet sales receipts to the online service The Xidan Department Store Group, which operates the Friendship Store in Beijing, expects to top $1.2 billion (U...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) ventured into the private-label product market today with the launch of Amazon.com's Bag Shop. The new feature offers a custom-designed collection of six bags, which range in price from $29.99 to $79.99 (US$) and are designed to be "a high-quality, highly functional, fashion-forward product." Amazon.com "seeks to be the wo...

In a move that is expected to boost awareness of online charity options for e-shoppers, Marketing Services Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: MSGI) has agreed to buy up to 18 percent of not-for-profit shopping center GreaterGood.com. The deal is pending shareholder approval MSGI will buy 6 million shares of preferred stock and warrants for an undisclosed price.

According to a new study by the Information Technology Association of America, about one third of American adults would be less inclined to buy products on the Internet if those purchases were taxed. The unsurprising data was released in conjunction with the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce's two-day meeting on Internet taxation "Voters w...