Articles by Paul A. Greenberg

Just weeks after unveiling its online personal finance service, General Electric Co. announced Tuesday that it has partnered with CompuBank to provide personal banking services via GE's already established GE Financial Network (GEFN) GEFN, which initially included information on annuities, auto and life insurance, loans and mutual funds, will now o...

E*Trade CEO Christos Cotsakos is projecting revenues in excess of $1 billion (US$) for 2000, although the company's first quarter profits were marginal The number two online brokerage, which lost $54.4 million in 1999, came through with $1.3 million in operating earnings, a breakeven point on a per share basis, for the quarter ending March 31st. Re...

After weeks of behind-the-scenes wrangling over remedies in the Microsoft antitrust case, published reports Monday indicate that the U.S. government and 19 states are inclined to seek a breakup of the company Reportedly, the government will propose a radical alteration in the structure of Microsoft, splitting it into two or three individual compani...

Data from two new studies shows that auto dealers and consumers alike are increasingly turning to the Web to purchase new cars According to venerable marketing information firm J.D. Power and Associates, twice as many car dealers are using online car buying services as last year.

Electronic commerce in Latin America is poised to grow to $82 billion (US$) by 2004, according to a new report by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research The research projects that the business-to-business (B2B) sector, accounting for 93 percent of the total growth, will be instrumental in helping the region quickly overcome infrastructur...

According to a new report by investment bank Bear Stearns, 80 percent of online travel sites are destined to fail over the next five years The six-month study projects that only 200 of the 1,000 existing online travel sites will still be in business in 2005, led by such stalwarts as Expedia.com, Travelocity and Priceline.com.

U.S. investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co. and international banking group HSBC Holdings announced a $1 billion (US$) deal Tuesday to form a new online global banking and brokerage company The new company, to be known as Merrill Lynch HSBC, will be an equal investment joint venture that will combine Merrill Lynch's global investment expertise with HS...

Mortgage industry executives at last week's Second Annual Online Mortgage Forum in Chicago, Illinois declared that U.S. Web surfers are increasingly using the Internet to research loans and compare rates, but are still wary of closing a loan online According to Reginald Bowser, vice-president of marketing for Lending Tree, Inc., unique situations a...

A new study by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research indicates that the U.S. government's perceptions of why some Americans lack access to the Internet are widely divergent with reality According to the study, ethnic background or race -- as is commonly believed -- does not explain the existence of such a "digital divide." Although a co...

U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) has asked the U.S. Justice Department to launch an investigation into whether a proposed business-to-business (B2B) exchange by six leading meat companies would violate antitrust regulations Wellstone made the request Thursday out of concern that the proposed exchange could have a damaging effect on U.S. fa...

Internet delivery service Kozmo.com was sued Thursday by the Equal Rights Center, a Washington D.C.-based civil rights group, and two African-American co-plaintiffs who claim the company refused to deliver merchandise to their homes because they reside in predominantly African-American neighborhoods The suit alleges that "Kozmo refuses to contract ...

As widespread consolidation prepares to sweep the e-commerce landscape, brick-and-mortar beauty queen Estee Lauder announced Wednesday that it has acquired struggling cosmetics e-tailer Gloss.com Estee Lauder will introduce a content-rich, multi-brand site that will offer prestige brands of beauty products sometime early next year. The company alre...

America Online surged ahead of Amazon.com in online transaction volume for the month of March, according to the NextCard eCommerce Index, a monthly listing of online merchants with the greatest number of transactions by NextCard customers Transaction volume was measured among the top 30 online merchants, with a number of nuances noted by the compan...

In a move typical of its well-established independent corporate philosophy, Volkswagen announced Tuesday that it will forgo joining an online auto parts marketplace with the Big Three U.S. automakers in favor of a similar strategic partnership with IBM The Wolfsburg, Germany-based Volkswagen, which is also working with i2 Technologies and Ariba to ...

The quest for dominance of the online travel bookings industry began in earnest this week, as Travelocity.com announced that its marketing agreement with Priceline.com -- in the works since late last year -- is now final. The announcement anticipates the scheduled June unveiling of an airline mega-site by an alliance of 28 major airline companies T...

In an effort to forestall a recurrence of the fulfillment and infrastructure problems that made the last holiday season a blue one for Toysrus.com, the beleaguered Internet arm of retail giant Toys "R" Us has unveiled plans to open two new fulfillment centers The addition of the centers, in Mira Loma, California and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, will...

Contrary to the current buzz surrounding high-profile online business-to-business (B2B) alliances, some industry observers say the future for e-commerce is in business-to-consumer deals, with an emphasis on such major purchases as real estate By some estimates, up to 50 percent of prospective American homebuyers will use the Internet to search for ...

Just days after the landmark antitrust ruling was handed down against Microsoft Corp., the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have issued joint guidelines for companies that seek to collaborate with competitors on the Internet The guidelines were issued Friday amid recent rumblings that new online alliances in t...

The Internet tax din grew even louder this week as members of the U.S. House of Representatives weighed in along predictable partisan lines Republican Virginia Governor James Gilmore told the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection Thursday that the report of the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce (ACEC) repr...

In an effort to make e-commerce more personal, a growing number of Internet businesses are targeting such specific population segments as minorities, children and women. In fact, two full-service financial sites targeting female Internet users debuted last week, claiming to provide financial services and content to meet the unique needs of women Ms...