Business

Online grocer Peapod said Tuesday it will hand over its pack-and-ship service to Netgrocer.com, in order to focus on local markets. Chicago, Illinois-based Peapod said Netgrocer's services will replace "Peapod Packages," which enabled customers to purchase certain non-perishable items that were t...

Priceline.com announced late Monday that it is replacing president and chief executive officer Daniel Schulman. The e-tailer said chairman Richard Braddock will retake the reins as CEO, a position he held from July 1998 to May 2000. Chief operating officer Jeffery H. Boyd will assume the role ...

Looking to tap the digital music subscription market, personalized software maker MusicMatch announced Monday that it is starting a fee-driven online radio service that will serve as a springboard for the launch of song-selling initiatives in the coming months. The San Diego, California-based compa...

Microsoft announced Monday that it was partnering with Unisys Corporation and Baltimore Technologies to design, develop, and market a Windows 2000-based software package that incorporates Identrus, an electronic identity verification system. The new product will allow loan officers at financial in...

Leading Internet portal Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) on Monday rolled out a new version of its instant messaging (IM) service, one that will enable users to place international phone calls through their personal computers. The feature comes amid an upgrade of Yahoo's IM service and is the latest in a s...

What's in a name? Plenty, when it's an online name. At least that's been the conventional wisdom. But with many of the best-known e-commerce brand names -- from Pets.com to eToys and Furniture.com -- now resting in peace, and without the piles of money needed to fuel the type of name-building ...

The controversy continues for travel mega-site Orbitz. Southwest Airlines sued the airline-backed travel giant Thursday for providing "false and misleading" information to its customers regarding Southwest flight schedules, rates and fares. Southwest also alleged that Orbitz is using Southwest's p...

Word of mouth is one of the strongest marketing mediums available -- so strong that some struggling dot-coms, desperate to save advertising dollars, are begging their customers to help spread the word about their products and services. "Word of mouth is very powerful in terms of buying power," F...

Looking to extend its reach to a new audience of potential customers, eBay announced Friday that it has launched a new service to allow newspaper readers to search their local print edition for items posted on the Internet auction heavyweight's site. As part of the program, sellers who have placed...

Microsoft announced Thursday that it had taken legal action against two online Florida businesses for alleged distribution of counterfeit software. Additionally, Microsoft announced that it had been awarded a total of $162,000 in settlements and judgments stemming from legal actions the company h...

A new car company offering customized automobiles over the Internet has been formed through the merger of online car sales company Model E and Flint, Inc. a start-up created by CarsDirect.com co-founder Scott Painter. The new venture will be called Build-To-Order, or BTOauto.com. "It's about the ...

DirectGroup Bertelsmann, parent company of CDNow and part-owner of Barnesandnoble.com, said Friday that it will buy e-mail marketing and e-commerce firm Zooba.com. DirectGroup, the corporate division that integrates Bertelsmann's direct-to-customer businesses, said that it plans to transfer half o...

Hit hard by a precipitous drop in sales, beleaguered Internet retailer Buy.com reported Wednesday that its first-quarter revenue plummeted 40 percent from the year-ago period and warned that its second-quarter revenue would see an even deeper decline. The Aliso Viejo, California-based company sai...

An online business directory designed to make business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce simpler and more efficient went live Wednesday. In addition to providing basic company information, the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) allows businesses to list their products and service...

North American e-commerce revenue is expected to grow 46 percent by the end of 2001 compared to a year earlier, to just over US$65 billion, according to a retailer survey released Wednesday by the Boston Consulting Group and Shop.org. In addition, the report predicted that online retailing will s...