Business

Internet auction leader eBay said late Tuesday it had temporarily halted trading in all items related to the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, the scenes of devastating terrorist attacks earlier in the day. The ban on items relating to the attacked locations is an extra measure that San Jose, ...

Yahoo! will host the Web site for the next two World Cup soccer tournaments under an agreement announced Tuesday with the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). Yahoo! said it has exclusive rights to produce, market and host the FIFAworldcup.com site, and will sell, along with...

Detailed information and recommendations about products are the most important reasons that customers return to e-tail sites, according to a report released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. In its report, "Back to Basics: Enhancing User Experience at Low Cost," Jupiter said that 59 percent of tho...

Is the strip-mall travel agent going to go the way of the dinosaur? With the surge of travelers turning to Internet sites to purchase their airline tickets, many are asking about the long-term viability of traditional travel agents, and even predicting their eventual demise. "The agent who can ge...

UK businesses racked up roughly US$82.7 billion in online sales last year, according to data released Monday by the British government's Office of National Statistics (ONS), accounting for 2 percent of total sales in the sectors the agency examined. Although the ratio of transactions conducted ov...

Want to see the future of online advertising? Among other things, it looks just like something you would find on your TV set. "We're already seeing (online) ads look more like TV commercials, and that's only going to continue," Denise Garcia, research director for media at GartnerG2, told the E-...

A system that allows U.S. businesses and individuals to make estimated tax payments over the Internet is now live, following a pilot program that began last October, the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday. The system "provides a convenient and secure method for paying taxes that is consistent...

Internet auction powerhouse eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) said Thursday it might seek to sell up to US$1 billion worth of stock in coming months. In a shelf-filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, eBay said it would use proceeds from the share sale for general corporate purposes, includin...

Can we conclude that as long as e-tailers carefully manage consumer expectations, and leverage technology and delivery partnerships, they can rest easy about their logistics processes? Not quite. Managing logistics costs continues to be a major hurdle for e-tailers, and is often the key reason th...

IBM will sell more computers and other products on eBay as part of a broad software and marketing agreement announced by the two companies Thursday. eBay also said that it will use IBM's WebSphere software to power the upgraded version of its online marketplace. The deal is a big win for IBM, G...

Following the lead of five other movie studios, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. said Wednesday they intend to launch a video-on-demand Internet-based service early next year. Movies.com will be a joint venture between Disney and Australia-based News Corp., the companies said, and will offer films...

Although their companies continue to spend money on many different aspects of e-business, corporate managers see less promise in the Internet than they did a year ago, according to a report released Wednesday by the Yankee Group. "Over the past year, the perception of Internet business has swung ...

With a crop of new film, publishing and music releases ready for harvest this fall, marketing executives in the entertainment industry should consider the Internet as a key tool to boost sales, forge online word-of-mouth campaigns and control post-launch buzz among consumers, according to a repor...

Looking to meet the much-anticipated consumer demand for electronic books, leading portal Yahoo! joined with four publishing houses Wednesday to launch an e-book site on its shopping network. Yahoo! said the deals with Simon & Schuster, Penguin Putnam, Random House and HarperCollins give it...

Nielsen//NetRatings recently estimated that the number of online users grew 16 percent from July 2000 to July 2001, with nearly 60 percent of Americans now online. The Internet, NetRatings said, is "now reaching the latter half of mainstream America," with late adopters helping to push Web use to...