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Members of the U.S. Congress are attempting to make it illegal for employers to electronically snoop on their employees without first telling them about it The proposed legislation would not outlaw electronic surveillance in the workplace, but would simply make it mandatory for employers to inform new employees of company surveillance policies and ...

Just two years ago, analysts, venture capitalists and the media were feverish with excitement over the prospects of the infant business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce industry. Dazzling projections spurred unrestrained funding followed by giddy news coverage as one dot-com after another joined the IPO party. But the rug was pulled out from under some of the brightest B2C babies before they had a chance to get up on their feet, and low murmurs of disillusionment quickly became a dull roar. A shakeout was coming...

Further fueling the bitter conflict between record labels and such file-swapping operations as Napster, Jupiter Communications, Inc. has released a report showing that people who use the file-sharing networks spend more money on music Users of Napster are 45 percent more likely to have increased their music spending than non-users, Jupiter found in...

Easily exceeding Wall Street's expectations, America Online, Inc. announced Thursday that an upsurge in e-commerce and advertising income helped double its fourth quarter revenues Excluding one-time investment gains and charges, the Dulles, Virginia-based company said it earned $334 million (US$), or 13 cents per share from $157 million, or six cen...

Barnes & Noble.com announced the launch of its online video store, which the company says will feature tens of thousands of movies in both DVD and VHS format The most recent Forrester Research PowerRanking puts Barnes & Noble in third place among online booksellers, behind Amazon and Borders. Amazon and Borders have a two-year head start selling mo...

Barnes & Noble.com announced the launch of its online video store, which the company says will feature tens of thousands of movies in both DVD and VHS format The most recent Forrester Research PowerRanking puts Barnes & Noble in third place among online booksellers, behind Amazon and Borders. Amazon and Borders have a two-year head start selling mo...

Barnes & Noble.com announced the launch of its online video store, which the company says will feature tens of thousands of movies in both DVD and VHS format The most recent Forrester Research PowerRanking puts Barnes & Noble in third place among online booksellers, behind Amazon and Borders. Amazon and Borders have a two-year head start selling mo...

Just four months after former General Motors executive Roy Roberts unveiled M-Xchange.com, a business-to-business (B2B) trade exchange focusing on minority businesses, the venture has shut down The exchange was heralded as the first major electronic commerce initiative of its kind, and publicly supported by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who said that...

We are on the edge of a new epoch. The moment that will usher in this brave new world will not be as dramatic as, say, dinosaurs disappearing in a great, cataclysmic convulsion as fireballs pelt the earth. It will be slightly more mundane: Microsoft will overtake Coke as the world's most valuable brand name. That's when we will know for sure the Internet has won the revolution...

In an attempt to extend its dominance of the video rental market to cyberspace, Blockbuster, Inc. has inked a deal with utility firm Enron to offer videos for rent over the Internet Blockbuster, which is a subsidiary of entertainment company Viacom, Inc., said the service could be up and running in test markets by the end of this year. An expansion...

After meeting in Brussels with European Commission officials on Wednesday, U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Robert LaRussa said that e-commerce issues related to Internet taxation and data protection should be the subject of ongoing international dialogue LaRussa also suggested that the "digital divide" issues in Europe and the U.S. are common enoug...

With a nod to the far-reaching power of the Internet, Texas Governor George W. Bush Wednesday made a full-day event out of relaunching his presidential campaign Web site The likely Republican nominee held a press conference to tout the site's user-friendly design and unveil a new TV commercial that focuses solely on bringing people to his site.

Novelist Stephen King, already a trailblazer in electronic publishing, will begin a revolutionary online experiment Monday when he sells the first installment of his new novel using the "honor system." Consumers who download the beginning of "The Plant" on King's Web site will be asked to send a check or money order for one dollar (US$). The second...

Portals are increasingly leading their massive audiences to the e-commerce watering hole, according to June ratings just released by Nielsen//NetRatings The ratings firm said that the large number of Web visitors to portal-affiliated shopping sites indicates that portals have evolved from large directories that helped people find places to go on th...

German media giant Bertelsmann AG announced Thursday that it will acquire struggling online music seller CDNow, Inc. for about $117 million (US$) The Guetersloh, Germany-based company will pay about $3 per share for CDNow and assume $42 million of the company's debt. Once a Wall Street darling, CDNow went public at $16 per share in 1998, but was al...

America Online and Citigroup Inc. have announced a new multi-year alliance that will enable AOL's 23 million subscribers to pay their bills online The Dulles, Virginia-based AOL will make Citigroup's payment services available through all of its channels, including AOL.com, CompuServe, Digital City, Netscape Netcenter and AOLTV. Users will be able ...

Even the checkout line tabloids would have trouble making this news sound surprising: A company that pays people to surf the Web is laying off workers. On the surface, it seems that if anything is shocking about this revelation, it's that it did not come sooner The company, AllAdvantage.com, is sticking by its guns, saying that the 10 percent staff...

The Holy Grail of the baseball memorabilia world, a near-mint condition card depicting Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop John Peter "Honus" Wagner, has been auctioned off by eBay for $1.265 million (US$) The selling price, which includes a bid of $1.1 million and a 15 percent fee, is the most ever paid for a baseball card and represents the...

E*Trade Group, the third-largest online brokerage in the United States, said Wednesday it squeaked out a razor-thin fiscal third-quarter profit on revenues that fell sharply as trading volumes withered. Analysts had expected a loss of one cent per share, but the Menlo Park, California-based company managed a profit of 2 cents per share, or $5.7 million (US$)...

Women's online network iVillage, Inc. (Nasdaq: IVIL) announced plans Wednesday to create a 50/50 joint venture with Tesco PLC, Britain's largest retailer and the operator of Tesco.com, to serve the women's online market in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland iVillage UK, representing iVillage's first international equity relationship, wi...