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Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) opened a travel store on its Web site Wednesday, featuring booking services and travel status information from travel site Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) The store also offers discounted travel through Expedia rival Hotwire and cruise vacations through National Leisure Group's The Vacation Store.

A few days back, the founder of online grocery Webvan submitted the high bid, at least so far, to buy back the remains of his once-glorious creation For the paltry sum of US$2.5 million, Louis Borders stands to get Webvan's technology platform, the foundation on which he once hoped to build a company that would change the shopping world....

Car companies are moving their purchasing and other commerce activities online, taking advantage of new technology to cut costs in a slowing economy, according to a report released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI) As a result, Jupiter said, the auto industry is positioned to lead a rebound in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, w...

Faced with intense pressure to grow their businesses quickly, e-commerce executives have been forced to make countless critical decisions -- sometimes at odds with what had once been unassailable Old Economy practices Some of these decisions have gone better than others, to say the least. More than 600 Internet companies have folded since January 2...

Music file-swapping network Napster inched closer to being reborn as alegitimate, paid service Monday when it announced a preliminary settlementof a class-action lawsuit filed by songwriters and music publishers Napster said it agreed to pay US$26 million to the National MusicPublishers' Association (NMPA) and other groups, and an additional $10mil...

Pure-play e-tailer Drugstore.com (Nasdaq: DSCM) said Friday that the September 11th terrorist attacks on the U.S. should not hurt its third quarter financial results. Bellevue, Washington-based Drugstore.com also said it remains confident that it can achieve profitability before running out of cash. Drugstore.com has forecast it would be in the bl...

When they write the definitive history book about the evolution of electronic commerce, 2001 may emerge as a pivotal year in the industry's growth That may sound surprising, particularly since the year so far has seen a bunch of dot-coms dying on the vine, not to mention general skepticism among consumers, investors and industry observers as to whe...

Despite the dot-com downturn, there is still room for small offline retailers on the Web and good reasons for them to be there, according to industry analysts "I think people have to separate what is happening to dot-coms from the value of the Internet to retailers," Gartner research director David Schehr told the E-Commerce Times.

As a country, the United States is just beginning to experience the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. One of the many consequences, even if not the most drastic, is the downturn in the travel industry The airlines say they collectively lost over a billion dollars during the days that flights were grounded. Airline stock valuatio...

Timing is everything in life. And for Amazon.com, the timing lately couldn't be much worse First, Amazon launched a personal computer shop on its retail site, despite severely slumping computer sales and a weakening economy....

General Motors (NYSE: GM) says that eGM, the internal organization created to key GM's online business development, is a transient entity. GM's hope is to absorb the learnings of eGM, disperse them throughout the company, and evolve into a whole e-corporation In Part 2 of her interview with the E-Commerce Times, eGM director of interactive marketin...

In a vote of confidence for his company, Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) chairman and chief executive officer Richard Braddock said Friday that he had ended a plan to sell some Priceline shares over the next year, and instead will exercise options to buy 750,000 shares Braddock's move follows a similar announcement from key Priceline shareholders. Thu...

How many times have you stopped just short of completing an online order because you were not sure of a product's size, color or overall look? If you're like most online consumers, the answer is probably: many, many times. And e-tailers know it....

Automotive kingpin General Motors (NYSE: GM) is serious about e-business. In 1999, GM created eGM, an internal organization intended to steer the company around costly e-mishaps and toward the best online business practices Using the Web to draw customers is largely the job of eGM director of interactive marketing Joyce Fierens. On the job since 19...

As the days take us further from the horrific events of September 11th, it becomes clearer that the tech industries have lost some of their best and brightest. Still, with the indomitable spirit that Americans typically display in times of crisis, essential online industries have hung tough. Chief among them is the online travel industry, a sector...

Many companies are misleading themselves when it comes to measuring the return on investment (ROI) they are getting from their onlinebusiness ventures, by relying too much on internal calculations to gauge their success, according to a studyreleased Thursday by Jupiter Media Metrix Jupiter said a survey of information technology executives found th...

Online travel companies Travelocity (Nasdaq: TVLY) and Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN) late Tuesday warned that the terrorist attacks of September 11th may hurt results later this year as consumers and businesses cut back on travel Like rival Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE), which earlier in the day said it expects business to pick up later in the year despite a d...

When spam is mentioned, most business owners immediately get a bad taste in their mouths. Spam costs companies time and money, from employees sifting legitimate e-mail from junk, to the technical and legal procedures used to fight spammers But to date, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has only gone after spam in cases in which deceptive adve...

No one can say Buy.com doesn't have a sense of humor. The e-tailer, which was recently saved from financial ruin by its founder, briefly published a sign across its site that read: "Not Going Out of Business Sale." But will a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Buy.com's woes be enough to keep its customers from getting weak in the knees about deal...

Some eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) users, questioning both the auction giant's motives and requirements for a charity auction benefiting victims of last week's terrorist attacks on the United States, are accusing the company of building its corporate image at their expense "How dare eBay ask we small sellers to bankroll their generous contribution to the Nat...