Business

General Motors and Autobytel.com said Wednesday that they have chosen the Washington, D.C. area to test an online car buying system that will enable shoppers to search all available vehicles and buy from a dealer of their choice. The 90-day test will begin May 1st and is designed to help GM unders...

Online travel sites racked up US$1.2 billion in sales in January, accounting for nearly a third of all e-commerce transactions for the month, according to a study released Tuesday by Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive. The study said that online travel spending in January climbed 17 per...

Two weeks after rumors surfaced that Amazon would link with retail giant Wal-Mart, a report Monday said that the e-tailer is now discussing a strategic alliance with consumer electronics seller Best Buy. Representatives from Amazon and Best Buy refused to comment on the report, which said that ...

Only two weeks after Egghead.com announced it was laying off 77 employees to cut costs, the computer software and hardware e-tailer said its chief financial officer, John Labbett, is leaving to "pursue a new opportunity closer to his home in Los Angeles." On March 7th, two days after the massiv...

Americans are growing more comfortable with buying their groceries online, according to a report released Monday by the University of Georgia. According to the two surveys taken by the university 18 months apart, there has been a "dramatic change" in the number of experienced online grocery sho...

An influential group of security analysts has asked Amazon to provide detailed financial information to allay concerns that the Internet behemoth is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The letter is the second sent to Amazon this month by the New York Society of Security Analysts' Committee f...

A group of investors filed a lawsuit against Priceline.com Friday, alleging that the name-your-price e-tailer conspired to drive up the price of its shares after its initial public offering (IPO). The suit alleges that Priceline's underwriters exchanged shares at the offering price of US$16 ...

The widescale deployment of broadband access, combined with intensified competition among communications, entertainment and technology firms, is likely transform current e-business models in the coming year, according to a study released Monday by Ernst & Young and Cap Gemini Ernst & You...

With the goal of encouraging Web merchants and shoppers to use personal checks for e-tail sales, the Electronic Payments Association instituted new rules Friday for how electronic checks are processed. The new rules will govern how Internet merchants accept payments by check sent through the as...

As the deadline for filing U.S. tax returns draws nearer, a new report released Thursday by the General Accounting Office (GAO) may give some taxpayers pause about submitting their returns through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) electronic filing program. According to the study -- commissioned b...

Online toy sales are on track to grow from US$793 million in 2000 to $1.2 billion by 2002, according to a report released Wednesday by The NPD Group. When consumers were asked which Web site they would consider buying toys from online in the next six months, Amazon dominated with a 23 percent share...

Luxury e-tailers who spend millions trying to imitate the offline luxury shopping experience to attract upscale customers may be wasting their money, according to a report issued Wednesday by Forrester Research. The report, "Selling to the Affluent Online," warned e-tailers not to forget that w...

A contest posted on BountyQuest asking for examples of technology that would invalidate Amazon's 1-Click patent ended Wednesday without a winner, but with some damage to the intellectual property claim, according to publisher Tim O'Reilly, who launched the initiative. The submissions from the 1...

Amazon jumped ahead of eBay during the month of February to become e-commerce's most visited Web site, according to a study released Tuesday by Jupiter Media Metrix. Amazon rose from the No. 11 position overall in January to No. 10 last month with a marginal increase of 71,000 unique visitors, to 1...

Business-to-business e-commerce revenues reached US$433 billion in 2000, marking a 189 percent increase over the $145 billion spent online by businesses in 1999 and exceeding industry expectations significantly, according to a study released Tuesday by Gartner Group. Last year, Gartner had pred...