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E-commerce, once the domain of "geek types" or consumers with highdisposable incomes, has hit the mainstream. The U.S. Census Bureau says e-commerce spending increased by more than 34 percent year-over-year to US$11.1 billion from the third quarter of 2001 to the same period in 2002. And sales jumped 24 percent year-over-year, to $13.7 billion, in the 2002 holiday season...

Microsoft has won another legal victory as a judge has barred two industry groups, backed by several of Microsofts rivals, from appealing the settlement the software giant reached with the U.S. Department of Justice on antitrust charges. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) ...

Steve Case has announced he will resign as AOL's chairman, following a lengthy battle to meld old and new media after the company's 2001 acquisition of Time Warner In a statement, Case said the difficult decision to step down was influenced by growing shareholder concern over the company's post-merger performance. He noted that the focus of that co...

It has been a long fall from the top. Back in the late 1990s, Internet companies were the darlings of a starstruck stock market. Pundits proclaimed the Internet would connect everyone and change everything. Consumers would be able to buy any good or service online, at any time, from anywhere. The fact that many companies' business plans were full of holes did not seem to concern many observers.

Fewer high-tech workers lost their jobs in 2002 than in 2001 as layoffs declined 33 percent, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas (CGC). Strikingly, CGC reported there were only 4,496 layoffs by e-commerce companies in 2002, compared with more than 56,000 in 2001. Even so, the total number of slashed jobs was high: 2002 sa...

In a holiday shopping season that was strong across the board for e-commerce but relatively weak for offline retailers, video gaming got a turbo-powered boost. Leading console maker Sony sold 8.5 million PlayStation2 units worldwide, up 24 percent compared with the 2001 holiday period. In North America, the surge was even more pronounced: Sony sold 4 million consoles in this region alone, 42 percent more than in 2001...

On paper, Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) appears to be one of the hottest tech companies around. Propelled in part by users' need to defend against a rash of destructive and well-publicized computer worms like Code Red, Nimda and SirCam, its stock price has jumped 70 percent in the past year. Nonetheless, leading industry experts seem to be far from enamored with the company. Some stock analysts have even responded by placing sell or hold ratings on Symantec, while others question the company's ability to compete successfully in some of its most important markets. Another leading analyst stated that Symantec may have recently squandered nearly a billion dollars on the acquisition of a related company whose technology is a "non-factor" in today's market. In Part I of this investigative report series, the E-Commerce Times goes beyond the headlines to find out what industry insiders really think of Symantec, and why so many are concerned about its future...

Gateway (NYSE: GTW) has revealed that its fourth-quarter earnings will not meet expectations because a flurry of promotional offers, including a first-ever two-for-one offer on PCs, failed to lift sales Gateway said it expects to book sales of US$1.06 billion for the last three months of 2002, well short of its earlier estimate of $1.2 billion. Als...

Holiday sales rose 24 percent over last year's levels to US$13.7 billion, boosted by strong growth in online clothing sales and changes in the makeup of the Web shopping population, according to a new report. That final tally from the eSpending report prepared by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings means sales far surpassed 2...

Few things are more precious to an enterprise than information. Using it effectively -- which oftens means sharing it efficiently -- can provide a competitive edge, helping separate winners from also-rans. But data is precious in another way: It must be protected, not only against outside threats, but increasingly against unauthorized use by emplo...

In a move to simplify its user interface, search engine Ask Jeeves has announced it will discontinue use of banner ads on all of its Web sites, instead focusing on sponsored searches, paid for by advertisers, to generate revenue This move follows Ask Jeeves' recent elimination of interstitials, also known as pop-up ads, from its Web site....

As recently as a few years ago, IT personnel were trained to harden their network perimeter, barring outsiders entirely. In contrast, today's security environment is far less clear-cut -- and the role of firewalls is expanding Corporate IT managers face two contradictory demands when purchasing firewalls for the enterprise. On one hand, today's fir...

The National Venture Capital Association has made official what most observers already knew: 2002 was a dismal year for initial public offerings, with just 22 venture-backed companies debuting in U.S. stock markets. Those firms raised a collective US$1.9 billion. In comparison, 35 companies held IPOs in 2001, raising a total of $2.8 billion in the...

As 2003 dawns, several signs indicate that the U.S. economy is starting to improve. Among them is the Conference Board's index of leading indicators, which rose solidly in November. With those welcome tidings in mind, some workers in the e-commerce sector may be hoping for a reprise of the late 1990s, when jobs were plentiful, stock options were actually worth something, andthe general high-tech atmosphere was highly caffeinated.

Driven by convenience and efficiency, e-commerce spending most likely topped US$74 billion in 2002, a 39 percent jump from 2001, according to Web traffic measurement firm comScore Media Metrix The research firm's preliminary findings, which exclude spending at auction sites, are based on survey data collected in the fall, but actual data collected ...

The bad news is no secret, but it bears repeating: If you have bought anything online in the past several years, your personal information, including your home address and credit card number, is probably accessible via the Internet -- and available to people with less-than-noble intentions. Driving home that stark reality, New York officials recen...

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group that counts Intel and AMD among its members, has announced that global sales of semiconductors increased just 1.9 percent to US$12.51 billion in November compared with October levels. The slow growth rate, which bucks the usual holiday spending trend, signals that the semiconductor industry is still struggling to overcome its worst-ever slump in 2001...

Recognizing that more consumers than ever would take to the Internet for holiday shopping this year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned consumers to be cautious. Their first piece of advice: Deal with only those companies that you know and trust. But because the Web is a blind medium, sometimes it is not even possible to verify the identity of the person at the other end of a transaction. On the disinformation superhighway, scams are increasingly successful at passing for the real McCoy...

Hoping to avoid long lines at the register and searching for bargains, holiday e-shoppers turned to books, music, videos and DVDs as their top choices. Together, these items represented 17.8 percent of all holiday spending, accounting for nearly US$1.9 billion this season, according to a report issued by Goldman Sachs & Co., Harris Interactive and Nielsen//NetRatings.

As corporate data accumulates at an exponential rate, the work of millions of employees, produced on computers keystroke by keystroke, has produced a virtual monster of a problem. The growing heap of computer files, which includes companies' most sensitive data, leads to a daunting question that can no longer be ignored: Where in the world can enterprises store data when ordinary hard drives and conventional backup devices start bursting at their seams? ...