Business

Urban delivery e-tailer Webvan said Wednesday that it will pay former chief executive officer George T. Shaheen US$375,000 per year for the rest of his life as part of a supplemental retirement package negotiated before Shaheen began his employment with the company. According to Webvan spokesperson ...

Pick up virtually any major media publication covering the dot-com shakeout of the past year and you're likely to come across a slight variation on the following theme: "the New Economy was a bust." But was the New Economy really a complete hoax? Many economists actually consider e-commerce to be...

Two European subsidiaries of eBay were sued by watchmaker Rolex over alleged auctions of counterfeit Rolex watches, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made Tuesday by the Internet auctioneer. The suit, which was filed April 25th in the regional court of...

Poor customer service in the business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce sector threatens to undermine trust in the fast-growing industry, according to a study released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI). Much like their consumer counterparts, B2B customers expect rapid response to thei...

Media conglomerate DirectGroup Bertelsmann announced Tuesday that it is integrating its online bookstore, BOL.com, into its multichannel book club division and closing some of BOL.com's international operations. According to published reports, Bertelsmann club division chief Klaus Eierhoff predi...

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it will sign the "Safe Harbor" privacy protection agreement between the United States and the European Union. Multinational companies that do not sign the agreement -- which details the EU's minimum standards for data protection -- by June 30th will be prohib...

Consumers spent US$4.3 billion online in April -- a 22.1 percent spike from the $3.5 billion racked up in Internet sales in March -- according to data released Tuesday by Forrester Research and Greenfield Online. "With temperatures soaring in the Northeast in April, people came out of the winter ...

It was a disappointing Mother's Day for those who went online to send flowers, according to data released Tuesday by Nielsen//NetRatings and Keynote Systems. The Internet performance firms reported that 25 percent of Mother's Day orders placed at three popular flower sites -- 1-800Flowers.com, F...

Three months after being called out of the game with the sale of its assets, sports e-tail site MVP.com began a comeback bid with its relaunch Tuesday by CBS SportsLine.com. SportsLine said it plans to tightly integrate the MVP.com store into its content-based sports site, with links to items fo...

Use of the XML mark-up language as a global standard for e-commerce transactions took an important step forward Monday when the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation (UN/CEFACT) and OASIS, a consortium of high tech giants, including IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, approved a standardized...

The two fastest growing online age groups during the past year were people over 55 and 18- to 24-year-olds, according to a report released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix. "These rapidly increasing age groups, which often have more leisure time than other demographic segments, are driving fund...

Few things are more annoying than opening your inbox and finding dozens of solicitations for credit cards, weight loss products and other goods and services. Unfortunately, no national law exists outlawing or regulating spam. Instead, spam is regulated by "a patchwork of state laws of varying ...

Although many sports Web sites in the United Kingdom are adding gambling services in an effort to boost income levels, the country's saturated online sports marketplace will face a squeeze in the coming years with a number of companies falling out of the game, according to a report released Monda...

British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless Plc (C&W) (LSE:CW) announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire Internet content delivery and networking services provider Digital Island (Nasdaq: ISLD) for US$340 million in cash. C&W said that when the acquisition is complete, ...

British telecommunications company Cable & Wireless Plc (C&W) (LSE:CW) announced Monday that it has agreed to acquire Internet content delivery and networking services provider Digital Island (Nasdaq: ISLD) for US$340 million in cash. C&W said that when the acquisition is complete, ...