Business

When Amazon.com executives said earlier this year that they planned to build their business by lowering prices whenever possible, the statement raised more than a few eyebrows. "All of our research shows that consumers are most interested in convenience, not price," GartnerG2 research director Da...

Despite deal sweeteners like discounts, only about one-third of Microsoft customers have signed up for the company's new subscription-based upgrade program -- and a July 31st deadline is looming. "From Microsoft's perspective, it's possible that they can make more money with this arrangement even...

In an effort to recapture ground lost to such competitors as Hotwire and Orbitz, reverse auction company Priceline has become the latest travel service vendor to climb aboard the fixed-price marketing train. "Moving toward the fixed-price model helps margins," Yankee Group analyst Lisa Melsted to...

Seeking to repair an embarrassing discrepancy between the pay of its top executive and the company's staggering financial losses, E*Trade said it has rewritten the contract of CEO Christos M. Cotsakos. Under the new contract terms, Cotsakos will repay about $21 million worth of compensation he re...

In what would be its largest reduction in nearly a decade, IBM reportedly will soon lay off as many as 8,000 workers. Company officials already have issued an earnings warning for the second quarter. "People internally had been expecting this," Harry Tse, vice president of research at the Yankee ...

A federal judge has denied a Russian software vendor's motion to dismiss criminal charges that allege the company violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by selling a product designed to break anti-copying technology. Lawyers and other free speech proponents said they are "extremely disappo...

Jupiter Media Metrix and Nielsen//NetRatings have settled a long-pending patent lawsuit in a deal that calls for NetRatings to provide struggling Jupiter with a much-needed capital infusion. According to the settlement's terms, NetRatings will pay Jupiter $15 million in cash to acquire two of Jup...

EBay has announced plans to work with consulting firm Accenture to help retailers and manufacturers sell excess merchandise directly to eBay's 46 million customers around the world. Separately, eBay signed a two-part agreement that calls for VeriSign to provide security and user verification serv...

E-commerce is garnering converts at an increasing pace, even though it is not grabbing the headlines it once did. Analysts say this quiet explosion is making its mark in back-office streamlining, business-to-business dealings, and efforts to assist customers via self-service Web channels. "The em...

EBay may have an imperfect business model, as Yankee Group analyst Rob Lancaster told the E-Commerce Times, but users clearly are buying into that model, and the auction giant eventually could overshadow other e-tailers as it extends its reach into other areas of e-commerce. Andrew Bartels, an an...

The vast majority of online job seekers visit just one of the top career sites on a regular basis, according to a new report from Jupiter Media Metrix. That finding may escalate an ongoing war between the two largest Web career companies, HotJobs and Monster.com. The study also showed there are t...

Although e-commerce can breathe a bit easier now that a long-standing moratorium on blanket online taxes has been extended, most observers say there will be little more than a brief pause before the battle is joined again. "Until the states can get together on how it's going to work, online retai...

The nine states suing Microsoft for antitrust violations have accused the Redmond, Washington-based software maker of plotting to monopolize the media player market and edge out market leader RealNetworks. Bolstering that contention, an attorney for the states produced an e-mail sent in 1999 by M...

America Online has dumped Overture's pay-for-placement search service in favor of Google's similar AdWords offering, depriving Overture of one of its biggest customers and sending the company's shares plummeting nearly 36 percent. Overture said it expects net income in the second quarter will amo...

Name-your-price travel company Priceline.com turned a $3.9 million profit in the first quarter as hotel and car rental deals helped offset continued weakness in airline ticket sales. Revenue dropped 3 percent to $262 million in the quarter compared with the first three months of 2001. "Lower airl...