Business

PayPal has announced it will shift its credit card processing to Wells Fargo & Co., making the financial giant the third company in the past year to handle PayPal's credit card transactions. "Credit card processing has been an issue in the past with PayPal," Morningstar.com analyst George Nic...

Ask online marketing experts whether it is possible to build a brand strictly by using the Web; most of them will say it is. And almost all of them will move quickly to qualify their answer. "I think it is possible, but I'm not sure it's the most effective way to build a brand," David Rosenblatt,...

Intel has announced, unsurprisingly, that it is withdrawing from the Web hosting business. The chipmaker said it will shut down the business unit and take a $100 million charge in its second fiscal quarter. The company launched its Web hosting effort, Intel Online Services, in 1999, as dot-com fe...

Just a day after Amazon.com halved its purchase threshold for free shipping from $99 to $49, e-tailer Buy.com has gone one step further, announcing it will offer free shipping with no minimum purchase. Buy.com founder and CEO Scott Blum made no attempt to hide the fact that the move was a direct com...

Earlier this spring, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said he did not foresee economic improvement during the next three months. He was not kidding. Oracle reported revenue of $9.7 billion for its fiscal year ended May 31st, down considerably from the $10.9 billion recorded last year. In the company's fi...

Amazon.com has announced it will lower the threshold for free shipping to $49 in a move that the company has called a long-term test to raise the stakes for itself and other online retailers. Amazon said a trial of the service will run for three to six months. "It's a bit of a risk, but Jeff Bezo...

Shopping carts have become standard for online vendors. But software developers -- particularly those that make some of the larger off-the-shelf e-commerce packages -- are upping the ante by integrating additional features into their products. The best carts now provide uninterrupted interaction ...

In an effort to attract users from the small business arena, eBay has forged a deal with office outsourcer Regus to help businesses find and rent equipped offices. The new service is part of eBay Real Estate, an online marketplace for real estate-related properties and services. Morningstar analy...

Loudcloud, the closely watched follow-up effort of Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, announced it will sell its core managed services and hosting business to tech giant EDS for $63.5 million in cash. "We said all along we wanted to be the EDS of the Internet, and now it turns out EDS will be th...

The Internet economy is entering maturity, but not in the stock market or even in research and development labs. The dot-com sector is coming of age in a courtroom. "You can't underestimate the distraction factor," Giga Information Group analyst Laura DiDio told the E-Commerce Times. "When execut...

Increased productivity, made possible by new technology, has been responsible for many of the record-setting job cuts of recent years, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. CGC said its survey of U.S. corporations found that the most productive industries top its list of co...

Recently, Apple announced a new advertising strategy to lure consumers away from Windows. But the company is taking a more low-key approach to targeting corporate users, hoping that its Xserve technology speaks for itself. "We think we're going to have the best system ... but we want to make sure...

In an attempt to thwart piracy -- and to find an online music strategy that works -- Sony Music and Universal Music have announced they plan to make downloading music from the Web less expensive. But with listeners accustomed to getting music free, pay-as-you-play services face an uncertain futur...

Internet media company Terra Lycos has launched a subscription-based online music service with the full cooperation of at least four major record labels. The new service is designed not only to deliver music to Internet listeners, but also to help Lycos decrease its dependence on ad revenue, whic...

Most people think of Web hosting and marketing outlays when they consider launching an e-commerce site, but a laundry list of additional costs are not apparent at first glance: merchant account fees, liability and fraud insurance fees, maintenance fees and transaction fees, and customer service, ...