Business

Amazon.com confirmed Wednesday that it will begin charging book publishers for having their titles appear in e-mail promotions sent to the e-tail giant's customers. Word of the new fees was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, which quoted publishers as saying the fees would start at US$10...

Japan accounted for nearly 70 percent of e-commerce in the Asian Pacific region in 2000, according to a study released Wednesday by research firm eMarketer. Notably, although business-to-business (B2B) spending in Japan accounted for a dominant portion of the country's US$27.3 billion slice of t...

A research note issued by a Lehman Brothers analyst Tuesday questioning the financial stability of Amazon.com drew a sharp retort from the Seattle, Washington-based e-tailer. Lehman Brothers vice president of convertibles strategy Ravi Suria wrote that Amazon was facing "considerable downside r...

Fashionmall.com (Nasdaq: FASH) and direct marketing and advertising firm GenesisIntermedia.com (Nasdaq: GENI) announced Wednesday that they have ended merger talks after the e-tailer's board of directors rejected a previously proposed buyout bid from Genesis. Genesis initially pitched its offer ...

Online retailer eToys said Monday it will lay off its remaining employees and wind down operations by the beginning of April, effectively closing the door on the company's chance of survival. Although eToys continues to work with Goldman Sachs to explore its options, with a theoretical sliver of a ...

More signs came Monday that the days of free online music are drawing to a close. Former digital download outlaw MP3.com (Nasdaq: MPPP) announced that it was offering a new licensing program and that it was expanding into Asia. Additionally, eMusic (Nasdaq: EMUS) said that it has partnered with...

Providian Financial Corp., one of the largest bankcard issuers in the U.S., has taken an equity stake in Internet payment services provider PayPal in a bid to boost both firms' online and offline offerings, the companies announced Tuesday. As part of the deal, Providian will offer the Web payment f...

British retail giant John Lewis Partnership said Tuesday that it has purchased the UK division of struggling U.S. e-tailer Buy.com (Nasdaq: BUYX). "For quite some time it has been clear that our operating model would be stronger in partnership with an offline business," said Murray Hennessy, c...

Nominations for the Oscars -- the film industry's most glamorous honor -- are big business. The Internet would seem to be the perfect place to generate Oscar ammunition while keeping marketing costs down. Guess again. "If they're doing anything in particular [on the Net] for Oscar buzz, I don't...

The news this week that MVP.com is closing its site and selling the remaining assets to rival Sportsline.com came as no surprise to those familiar with the rash of consolidations sweeping through the online sporting goods arena. With Sportsline.com, Quokka Sports, Global Sports and a handful of o...

In the coming years, chemical firms will shift their Internet strategies from conducting online transactions to designing customized products -- with chemical buyers making use of online development portals -- according to a report released Monday by Forrester Research. "Moving basic commerce fun...

In what is essentially a response to rapid consolidation in the online car-buying sector, General Motors (NYSE: GM) told its dealers Sunday that they will have the option of selling other car brands through a new online sales operation, AutoCentric. While GM has yet to publicly unveil AutoCentr...

In contrast to e-marketplaces in the U.S., which are largely funded by homegrown investors, most of the funding for Latin American business-to-business (B2B) marketplaces is coming from international sources, according to a new report from Jupiter Research. "The reluctance of regional players to...

Take a look around Dot-Com Island. There isn't an e-tail site still alive that hasn't been affected by the recent shakeout to some degree. However, some of the Web merchants are more likely to survive than others. The defining characteristics of those companies vary slightly, but one thing they all ...

Pet supplies e-tailer Petopia.com pulled the plug on its planned US$100 million initial public offering Friday, saying in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has sold almost all of its assets and is no longer in business. The San Francisco, California-based compa...