Business

The first wave of online grocery stores is all but gone, but one year after Webvan secured its title as the biggest dot-bomb ever, the online grocery segment is slowly reinventing itself. Brick-and-mortar supermarkets are cooking up some early success with hybrids of the original model. Indeed, i...

Dot-com incubator CMGI said it has negotiated to end a 15-year, $114 million deal that called for its corporate name and logo to adorn the stadium where the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots play football. Razor and battery maker Gillette will take over the naming rights. While the move ca...

Yahoo! has acquired a 15 percent share of European mobile phone service provider Sonera zed Ltd. Although the two companies are not disclosing financial terms of the deal, they soon will begin delivering co-branded mobile services across Europe. During the first phase of the partnership, the duo ...

Internet market research is designed to be evergreen, so that clients who buy advice about online customer service or traffic-building tactics can use that advice later. Typically, Internet market research is so geared toward business goals that companies use large doses of analyst insight when pl...

Media outlets are jumping on the paid-content bandwagon, with national and regional players alike announcing plans to charge visitors for online access to print and broadcast content. Freedom Communications -- a Florida newspaper publisher -- is the latest to join the for-fee parade. The group's ...

Dot-com layoffs awakened from a midsummer slumber, more than doubling in July to 1,750 lost jobs, according to a Challenger, Gray and Christmas report. That makes July the third-worst month so far this year for Internet-related layoffs, behind May, which had 2,078 cuts, and January, when 1,802 we...

In the early days, when profit was just a vague promise that no one seemed to care too much about, e-commerce companies tried nearly every trick in the book, no matter how outrageous or costly, to build their customer base. Online retailers have learned that buyers are much more serious about e-c...

In its infancy, e-commerce was all about building a Web site, attracting "eyeballs" and capturing orders. But within a few years, with millions invested and no profitability in sight, many e-tailers were forced to close their virtual doors. Now that e-commerce has moved beyond the shakeout stage,...

EBay is reportedly close to a deal to sell its Butterfields division, probably for considerably less than the $260 million price tag the auction house carried in early 1999, when eBay set out to leverage its real-world auction assets. The sale would constitute recognition by eBay of the premise t...

In an attempt to beef up its online music service, Pressplay has unveiled version 2.0, which, according to the company, will give users greater freedom in listening to, downloading and storing music. Like most online music services sponsored by record labels, Pressplay has drawn criticism from li...

The war of words over travel site Orbitz has reached the White House. Several Orbitz competitors, including Travelocity parent Sabre Holdings and Expedia.com, recently sent representatives to a White House meeting, at which they made their case for stepping up reviews -- already under way by the ...

Amid growing problems behind the scenes, America Online is releasing the first major beta version of AOL 8.0. The full version is expected to launch this fall. While analysts said they do not expect version 8.0 to attract new customers, new enhancements could help AOL keep the ones it already has...

In a deal that might ultimately shift the balance of power among computer vendors, IBM will pay $3.5 billion in cash and stock for PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting. Pascal Matzke, a senior analyst at Giga Information Group, told the E-Commerce Times that the acquisition is "actually a good match...

Analysts agree that Dell's build-to-order model for selling PCs and servers not only works well for current market conditions but also is likely to keep rivals chasing the company for the foreseeable future. Still, the company must overcome some potential long-term hurdles.

Venture funding dropped 11 percent last quarter to $5.7 billion, a level not seen since late 1998, as venture capitalists continued to nurse their wounds and stayed on the sidelines in large numbers, according to the latest quarterly survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics a...