Business

The news of labor strife at Amazon.com, Webvan and Etown has industry observers asking this question: Are unions responsible for the struggles of online businesses, or do e-tailers only have themselves to blame for the dot-com union movement? Because investors are usually sitting on the fence abou...

Over the past few months, Yahoo! has been swiftly moving to diversify its revenue streams and decrease its dependence on online advertising. The Web giant's efforts to boost income include the recent decision to charge users listing fees for online auctions and the expansion of its business-to-...

Despite posting a greater-than-expected fourth-quarter 2000 loss on Thursday, travel services e-tailer Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) secured investments totaling US$50 million from two Asian firms and predicted it would have a pro forma operating profit during the second quarter of 2001. "We cont...

Homestore.com (Nasdaq: HOMS) said Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has signed off on its planned purchase of Move.com, setting the stage for the Net's largest real estate firm to become even more dominant. The Westlake Village, California-based Homestore said while investigat...

Online auction search site Bidder's Edge, which was barred last year by a court order from combing auctions that were listed on Internet heavyweight eBay, said that it will be shutting down its search service on February 21st. Burlington, Massachusetts-based Bidder's Edge said that the business ...

Barnesandnoble.com scored a legal victory over rival e-tailer Amazon.com Wednesday when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. lifted a preliminary injunction that had barred Barnesandnoble.com from using one-click Web shopping technology. In its ruling, the court said that Barnesandnoble...

Brick-and-click sellers dominated the online holiday season in the UK, according to a new study released this week by Nielsen//NetRatings. "Clicks-and-mortar retailers were able to start their holiday preparations and marketing earlier and with higher visibility than their pure play competitors. T...

Film fans are finding that buying their movie tickets via the Internet is an increasingly attractive option, especially when the movie is as red-hot as box office hit "Hannibal." "We sold three times as many movie tickets online [during] Hannibal's opening weekend than we had the week before," ...

Webvan Group will continue its fight for survival in the unforgiving online grocery business without its original driver. The company announced Wednesday that Webvan founder Louis Borders had resigned from the company's board of directors for personal reasons. Webvan, like its e-tail brethren, h...

Spurred on by the ease of Internet shopping, the online market for Valentine's Day goods and services in 2001 will have increased by more than 16 million users in North America compared to a year ago, according to a study released Tuesday by Gartner Group. Overall, Gartner said that North Ameri...

U.S. lawmakers are considering the launch of a federally funded e-commerce pilot program designed to help small and mid-sized manufacturers take their businesses online. The Electronic Commerce Enhancement Act, if passed, will require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to ...

Amazon.com remained the top online retailer in January with roughly 2.3 million projected buyers -- more than three times that of nearest competitor Barnesandnoble.com -- according to a report released Wednesday by market research firm PC Data. While Amazon also managed to double the number of shop...

Overstock.com, which has already carved a niche in cyberspace for its dealings in the assets of dead dot-coms, threw its hat into the online travel market Tuesday. The company said it has more than 6 million bargain airline tickets, for sale to destinations worldwide, that it obtained from an un...

Paving a new way to trade stocks via the Internet, OnStar, a division of General Motors, said Tuesday that it will offer drivers voice-enabled online trading with Fidelity Investments starting this summer. Under the agreement, the owners of about 800,000 cars equipped with the OnStar navigatio...

When you examine the state of e-commerce today, one thing is abundantly clear: traditional brick-and-mortars are making the greatest inroads online. According to research firm Media Metrix, six of the top 10 gaining retail sites for the holiday shopping season were traditional offline brands suc...