Business

Fry's Electronics said Friday it has agreed to buy electronics e-tailer Outpost.com in a deal that includes an immediate US$13 million loan. The all-cash deal values Outpost shares at 25 cents each, for a total of about $8 million. Including the cash loan, the deal is worth about $21 million. Ac...

Online travel company Expedia said Monday it is making its services available to French travelers through a joint venture with French national railroad company SNCF. Expedia's airline, hotel, train and car reservation services will be available on SNCF's Web site, which Expedia says is the top tr...

When Buy.com announced that its ability to accept credit cards -- and therefore its viability as a business -- was in doubt, the admission shed new light on some important but often overlooked partners for many e-tailers: credit card processors. With the help of its founder and soon-to-be-owner S...

U.S. e-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2001 dropped 1.8 percent from the previous quarter, the Census Bureau of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Thursday. However, not all news from the online sector is discouraging. Year-over-year e-commerce sales actually grew 24.7 percent, ac...

Online postage company Stamps.com said Friday that it cut about 25 percent of its workforce as part of a plan to reduce costs and turn a profit, and that chief financial officer Ken McBride will take over the chief executive post. McBride, who has been with the company since April 1999 and has se...

According to its main financial backer, Valassis Communications, online coupon provider Save.com will cease operations due to insufficient funding and a lack of advertisers. "A Web site that attracts consumers who are deal-seekers does not appeal to manufacturers," Forrester research director Rob...

Another Net appliance has made an early exit. This time it's Sony's eVilla Net Entertainment Center, which lasted just two months. According to Sony, the eVilla online service is scheduled to end on September 13th. eVilla customers were mailed a letter from Sony the week of August 27th detail...

The back-to-school shopping season might not be the biggest quake on the e-commerce Richter scale -- holiday gift-giving tends to rock the e-tail world more. Even so, the return to the classroom provides a welcome excuse for e-tailers to convince consumers to shake off the summer doldrums and sta...

As the expiration date for a rival takeover bid from PC Connection approaches, Fry's Electronics is back in the running to acquire struggling e-tailer Outpost.com, Fry's disclosed Wednesday. According to a filing by Fry's with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), buyout talks with...

Internet brokerage E*Trade said late Wednesday that it plans to buy market maker Dempsey & Company for US$173.5 million in cash and stock, and that it will consolidate its existing operations in order to diversify its revenue sources and cut costs. The restructuring, which E*Trade described a...

eBay said Wednesday that it reached a deal with Columbia TriStar Television Distribution, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, to produce a daily syndicated television show focusing on "the stories behind the millions of items traded daily on eBay and other venues." "To the extent that eBa...

Ford Motor Company heard from the U.S. Court of Appeals this week that its pre-owned vehicles Web site was operating in violation of Texas state laws. Working in partnership with auto dealers in Houston and in five other U.S. cities, Ford's Pre-Owned Showroom violated the Texas Motor Vehicle Comm...

Firing back at critics who contend that its advertising software uses illegal delivery tactics, Gator.com said Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against one of its most vociferous detractors, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), asking a U.S. court to declare that the trade group's charges are ...

Most financial-service Web sites fail to give users appropriate options for protecting the use of their personal financial information, according to a report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). The study found that mortgage companies and big banks are t...

Traffic to Internet-only banks is decreasing, while multichannel financial institutions have watched their online activity double over the past year, according to a report released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix. The number of visitors at the Web sites of banks that also have a brick-and-morta...