Business

Even the checkout line tabloids would have trouble making this news sound surprising: A company that pays people to surf the Web is laying off workers. On the surface, it seems that if anything is shocking about this revelation, it's that it did not come sooner.

America Online and Citigroup Inc. have announced a new multi-year alliance that will enable AOL's 23 million subscribers to pay their bills online.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted almost unanimously Tuesday that spam should be unlawful.

The high-tech economy spawned a new breed of the super-wealthy by appealing to the gambling lust of some very smart and extremely ambitious people. They made their fortunes not through blood, sweat and tears, but through stock options. Some of the billionaires thus created are worth a few billion do...

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) is scrambling to keep users from being affected by the latest security flaw in its software, an opening that could allow malicious users to take over other computers.

Online media company CNET Networks, Inc., which provides information on tech products, news, and television programming, has agreed to acquire Ziff-Davis' tech news site ZDNet for $1.6 billion (US$) in stock.

Online advertising campaigns result in significantly more traffic to e-tail Web sites and attract attentive visitors who are likely to linger, according to new research by Media Metrix (Nasdaq: MMXI) division AdRelevance.

The burgeoning online gambling industry won a political victory Monday when a bill to ban online casinos failed to pass the U.S. House of Representatives. A similar bill has already been passed in the Senate.

With the recent vote by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to expand the number of top level domains (TLDs) on the Internet, some e-tailers may be asking not only if a rose by any other domain name will smell as sweet -- but also whether its price will be as steep.

The White House and other U.S. government officials say they are working to give Internet users the same level of protection against "wiretapping" that they currently have when talking on the telephone.

Undaunted by the criticism and controversy surrounding Napster, the Internet music-sharing company they founded, Bill Bales and Adrian Scott have announced the impending launch of AppleSoup, a venture that will bring Hollywood into the age of file-swapping.

A new report by Forrester Research predicts that an emphasis on infrastructure and high-level services will allow online pharmacies to emerge as e-commerce success stories over the next two years.

Do you remember the incredible thrill you felt the first time you hooked up to the World Wide Web? Think back. Can you recall that feeling of -- for lack of a better word -- connection? That sense of being part of something so vast, so global, so post-modern?

In an apparent effort to keep pace with other portals that offer e-commerce storefronts to small businesses, NBC Internet (Nasdaq: NBCI) said Tuesday it will partner with Bigstep.com to assist companies in building Web sites, developing catalogs and accepting credit cards.

A friend of mine -- who is very good at finding the dark side of every bright picture -- firmly believes that in the midst of the United States' longest run of peacetime prosperity, we are faced with the sad truth that customer service is dead.