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Of all the issues surrounding e-commerce, privacy is perhaps the most hotly debated. Everyone wants to protect privacy, but no one can agree on how Resolution of the issue is going to take some work. Until people in the e-commerce world begin to grasp the concept of privacy as a social value, and understand that it involves more than merely protec...

Consumers increased their online shopping by 46 percent in 2000,racking up about US$56 billion in sales for the year,according to data released Tuesday by ActivMedia Research As part of its annual report gauging the performance of business-to-consumer (B2C) vendors, ActivMedia also found that about 16 percent of Web-based transactions were conducte...

E-tail giant Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and retail partner Toys 'R' Us (NYSE: TOY) dominated the online shopping arena this holiday season, according to a report released Tuesdayby Nielsen//NetRatings The joint venture of Amazon and Toys 'R' Us saw 123 million visitors, more than five times the traffic of its closest competitor.

Intershop Communications AG, a European e-commerce software maker, plummeted10 3/64 to 5 5/64 in early trading Tuesday after joining several of its U.S.counterparts in warning of weak results for the fourth quarter and fiscalyear The Hamburg, Germany-based company, which also has offices in San Francisco,California, said it lowered its expectations...

America Online said Tuesday that its members spent more than US$4.6 billion online during the holiday season and $20 billion for all of 2000. The latter figure is more than twice what was spent the year before "It's clearer than ever that online shopping is growing by leaps and bounds," said AOL president Bob Pittman. "We've posted another banner h...

Twenty-two percent of Americans who bought gifts on the Internet in 1999 decided against buying online in 2000, according to a survey released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey, which appears to run contrary to more bullish assessments of thejust-concluded year, also suggests that the 2000 holiday shopping season only ...

Terra Lycos (Nasdaq: TRLY) was up 7/16 at 11 early Tuesday after the companysaid its Lycos portal saw traffic this holiday shopping season that was morethan double that of last year's "very successful" holiday period Referrals from the Lycos network generated more than 250 percent morerevenue than the 1999 holiday season, while unique visitors to L...

Wall Street investment firm C.E. Unterberg Towbin decided last week to drop coverage of e-commerce stocks, claiming that the space wasn't making anybody any money. Some reports portrayed the move as a fitting way to end a year of very public struggles for the hearts and dollars of investors, which is a fittingly nonsensical way to look at the matt...

With the grim outlook for the online sales landscape, with companies shifting strategies to accommodate the downturn, e-tailers should be doing everything possible to court... well, me Unfortunately, even though we're in a new economy, complete with new media, American men are being treated as if they're all Fred Flintstone. Many Web sites for men...

The early numbers themselves are reason to applaud, take a bow and celebrate: E-tail spending apparently doubled over last year's level. A 100 percent increase in anything is impressive, but what makes the numbers even more startling are the circumstances under which that increase happened. Because e-tailers were restrained during e-holiday 2000 i...

The dot-com shakeout is not the big e-commerce news of 2000. It should surprise no one that a raft of new companies that pinned all their hopes on a flawed business model were doomed to fail. The headline of the year is this: "The People Bought E-Commerce." They like it. They really do....

A new report from BizRate.com shows thatshoppers spent more than US$6 billion online this holiday season, up 60percent from last year, as satisfied customers returned to their favoriteWeb merchants More than 52 million orders for goods were placed over the Internet betweenNovember 20th and December 26th, according to the report issued Thursday by t...

So how bad a year was 2000 for e-commerce? Think about it like this: If e-commerce is your friend, you should be arranging therapy for it right now. As 2001 approaches, e-commerce is in need of some serious time on the couch....

This week's decision by eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) to enforce a prohibition on offline deals between members has angered many users, sparking allegations that the Internet auction giant's stated goal of protecting its customers is disingenuous It has long been the official policy of eBay to prohibit members from arranging deals outside the confines of cyb...

Priceline.com founder Jay Walker will step down from his position as vice chairman of the embattled e-tailer's board of directors on Sunday, the company announced Thursday Walker, who serves as the chief executive officer of his privately held company, Walker Digital, said he is leaving Priceline's board in order to focus on business challenges fac...

ePlus, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLUS) soared 4 1/4 to 12 Thursday after the companyannounced it expects to beat analysts' expectations for both third andfourth-quarter earnings The Herndon, Virginia-based provider of online procurement, asset managementand financing services said higher margins and lower-than-expected expenseswill result in earnings per share...

WebMD Corp. (Nasdaq: HLTH) gained 17/32 to 7 7/8 Thursday after the Internethealth care company ended a strategic alliance with pharmaceutical maker DuPontCo. (NYSE: DD) that called for DuPont to share a portion of the company's portal revenues The alliance, formed in March 1999, had been set to expire in 2004. Underterms of the agreement, DuPont w...

i2 Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: ITWO) gained 3 9/16 to 60 1/8 Thursday afterthe company said it plans to buy Trade Services Holdings' content divisionsfor cash and stock i2, which provides business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce software, said itwill acquire Trade Service Corp. and its ec-Content, Inc. affiliate in orderto expand upon a pair of conten...

Fashionmall.com (Nasdaq: FASH) was up 3/32 at 2 11/16 early Friday afterNarax, Inc., a Beverly Hills, California-based buyout firm, said it offeredto acquire the e-tailer for US$3.50 per share in cash Narax president Michael Savage said Fashionmall represents "an extraordinaryopportunity that could be developed with the help of its management and h...

E-commerce packed a lot of history into the year 2000 -- not all of it good, by any means. Indeed, future generations may consider the long, steady decline of stock values and the concurrent shakeout as the story of the year. As we head into 2001, several year 2000 issues remain unresolved. Most of all, e-commerce companies will continue to be wat...