Business

I won't say I don't receive pitches for the occasional mortgage discount or Vegas vacation, the latest performance-enhancing elixir or anatomical wonder pills. Somehow those untidy and still slightly amusing offenders still wriggle past my defenses. In general, though, I've had good results with a b...

When HP merged with Compaq just over a year ago, the combined company surpassed Dell in PC sales -- but with continued yearly growth rates of more than 20 percent, Dell had regained the top spot by the first quarter of 2003. Just last week, Dell reported its worldwide shipments had increased by near...

Call it the CTO's top 10 list. Every week, Keynote Systems releases a list of the top-performing Web sites in terms of load times, separating the lightning-quick from the sadly sluggish. It is little wonder that IT departments are focused on speeding up page load times -- a quick response can make t...

When e-commerce first became popular, it was not long before affiliate marketing sprung up as a way for small-site Davids to drive traffic toward e-tail Goliaths -- and make some change in the process. However, many affiliate programs were structured so that the house always won, and minor players w...

After a short run as a buzz phrase during the dot-com surge, business-to-business (B2B) exchanges have fallen below most people's radar screens. However, the truth is that B2B is quietly trucking along. The only difference between the vision of yesteryear and the reality of today is that instead of ...

Governments and private enterprises, particularly outside the United States, are stepping up efforts to find alternatives to computer networks that rely on Microsoft products, according to a report from Gartner. The research firm said several issues, ranging from changing licensing agreements to a s...

It is a scene that retailers have seen since the world's first bazaar opened: the slow sales period, complete with idle clerks, empty aisles and languishing goods. E-tailers have come to know these stretches -- the low-revenue valleys that lie between peak shopping times -- well. Despite the now-pre...

In recent months, a few large e-tailers, including Target.com and Walmart.com, started charging sales tax on purchases made through their sites. If more e-businesses hop on the bandwagon in coming months, the trickle may become a trend. The timing certainly seems right: With many state governments f...

Rapidly expanding search engine Google has launched a blitz of overseas initiatives, establishing local news search services in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. The effort is an attempt to build on the early success of Google News, a U.S. service that aggregates thousands of news stories fr...

Just a few years ago, getting an e-business off the ground was as easy as drawing up a business plan and finding the venture capital to fund it. Those days, to put it mildly, are over. But this does not mean businesses that rely on the Web are no longer sprouting. While most e-biz startups are not d...

Nearly 31 million U.S. Internet users aged 18 and older have downloaded music in the past month -- but nearly three-quarters of those people also have purchased music either online or in music stores in the past three months, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. That finding supports a long-held argume...

Thanks to millions of dollars in investments on the merchant end and widespread upgrades to broadband connections by consumers, e-commerce has begun to move at a faster pace. Still, transactions can bog down, especially over dial-up connections, and security remains one of the biggest impediments to...

A spike in Sun Microsystems shares has fueled long-simmering speculation that the once-mighty tech firm may be the target of an acquisition by a larger rival. On Friday, however, the company's shares gained 12 percent to close at $3.75. But some analysts said that although a buyout is possible as lo...

Thanks to dutiful sons and daughters, the approach of Mother's Day has become highly visible online, with a profusion of flowers, candy and other tokens of esteem displayed. It is harder to predict, however, which e-tailer will come out ahead in the race to win the affection of online shoppers. Will...

Apple's new iTunes Music Store features flat 99-cent per-song fees and few restrictions on usage once a song is downloaded. By putting itself at the forefront of digital music distribution, Apple could well become a powerhouse in this still-nascent e-commerce space. Will iTunes catapult Apple toward...