Articles by Teri Robinson

EarthLink announced Monday that it will buy low-cost computer vendor PeoplePC for about US$10 million, but the giant Internet service provider (ISP) left open the possibility that the deal could swell to $14.3 million EarthLink is targeting "the value segment of the ISP market," company CEO Garry Betty said in a statement.

For all the talk about the World Wide Web, e-commerce is not so worldly after all. The Web may disregard international boundaries, but shoppers still must abide by the laws of their home country -- and then some Recent controversy over the release of the first Harry Potter DVD underscores the problems and limitations of conducting transactions over...

Intel wounded Wall Street's hopes for recovery Thursday by lowering its forecast after market close. The company said its second-quarter revenue should total US$6.5 billion, rather than the $6.4 billion to $7 billion projected earlier this spring News of the altered guidance sent Intel stock down 10 percent to $24.18. Shares had dropped 4.2 percent...

EBay expects to rake in nearly US$1 billion in revenue during 2002, CEO Meg Whitman said at the auction giant's shareholder meeting. Whitman added that operating earnings will total between 73 and 75 cents per share....

Less than a month after Napster said it would sell its assets to Bertelsmann in a deal worth US$8 million, the online music swapping service has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Napster's bankruptcy comes as no surprise; the company had assets of $7.9 million and liabilities of more than $101 million. But...

With surgical precision, IBM has sliced 2,000 jobs from its Global Services unit as it struggles to bring its financials more in line with forecasts While cuts in the division were expected, the number was much higher than originally thought, particularly considering that Global Services has performed well for Big Blue.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has taken aim at the growing amount of spam plaguing New York consumers by filing suit against online marketing company MonsterHut and two of its executives "Every day, New Yorkers are being inundated with unsolicited commercial e-mails, or spam," Spitzer said. He called a portion of the spam "a vehicle for f...

Sun Microsystems has positioned itself to tackle the Linux marketwith a significant upgrade to its Solaris operating system The new version of Solaris, which features enhanced built-in Linuxcompatibility, is seen as an attempt to mesh Solaris offerings with Linux.The OS also includes a development toolkit that should simplifydevelopment of Linux-co...

Microsoft may have thought it could make software upgrades easier for customers -- and secure a steady revenue stream -- by mandating an automatic upgrade plan for applications and operating system software, but the company should rethink its strategy, analysts said. Instead of reaping greater revenue, it seems that the software giant has granted ...

For online shoppers, making a purchase often seems relatively straightforward. Point and click, check the order, enter credit card information, and the transaction is a done deal. Authorization is delivered within seconds Behind the scenes, it is not so easy. Pushing that "Buy" button activates a complicated sequence of events that would seem mind-...

After posting disappointing financial results and warning Wall Street that it would be tough to meet forecasts, IBM plans to cut US$1 billion to $2 billion in costs starting this year, company CEO Sam Palmisano told financial analysts Newcomer Palmisano, who took the reins from storied IBM leader Lou Gerstner on March 1st, stressed the importance o...

It is fitting, somehow, that the company whose name became synonymous with catalog sales will buy the company that has become the largest specialty clothing retailer in both Internet and catalog sales for a staggering US$1.9 billion. Sears Roebuck & Co. will pay $62 per share for Lands' End -- 21 percent more than Lands' End stock was worth last w...

In what would be its largest reduction in nearly a decade, IBM reportedly will soon lay off as many as 8,000 workers "People internally had been expecting this," Harry Tse, vice president of research at the Yankee Group, told the E-Commerce Times....

The high-tech industry breathed a collective sigh of relief Tuesday as Cisco reported that its third-quarter operating profit more than tripled to $838 million from the year-ago period. The company also booked a net profit of $729 million, compared with last year's net loss "From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run," Cisco CEO J...

EBay may have an imperfect business model, as Yankee Group analyst Rob Lancaster told the E-Commerce Times, but users clearly are buying into that model, and the auction giant eventually could overshadow other e-tailers as it extends its reach into other areas of e-commerce Andrew Bartels, an analyst with Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce...

The nine states suing Microsoft for antitrust violations have accused the Redmond, Washington-based software maker of plotting to monopolize the media player market and edge out market leader RealNetworks. But a Microsoft executive who took the witness stand during the antitrust trial denied the claims Will Poole, a Microsoft vice president who ove...

America Online has dumped Overture's pay-for-placement search service in favor of Google's similar AdWords offering, depriving Overture of one of its biggest customers and sending the company's shares plummeting nearly 36 percent Despite being downgraded by Merrill Lynch from strong buy to buy, Overture said it expects to follow its strong first qu...

Hewlett-Packard got the green light late Tuesday from a Delaware court to continue with its plans to merge with Compaq The US$18 billion deal, which is hotly contested by many HP employees and would represent the technology industry's largest ever merger, hung in the balance while the court heard a suit brought by dissident shareholder and former H...

Network Associates (NA) shares tumbled Wednesday, dropping more than 20 percent to US$19, as the security company withdrew its $224 million offer to purchase the 25 percent of McAfee.com it does not already own NA canceled the offer, which it made in early April, after a check of its books during a tax filing found accounting errors that might comp...

With a first-quarter net loss of US$54.2 billion, one of the largest ever recorded, AOL Time Warner's earnings news drifted like a black cloud over a week that previously had seemed mostly positive for the technology and Internet industries. The company's woes are attributable in part to the diminishing value of AOL's $106.2 billion purchase of Ti...