E-Commerce

Online outlets' share of the advertising pie grew 14 percent from a year ago, with mobile channels commanding a larger bite as more users consume content on smartphones and tablets, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Advertisers spent a tota...

eBay has sprung two changes on its customers and the retail industry: It redesigned its website and logo, and it announced a same-day shipping service -- a feature that is well on its way to becoming an expected offering from large etailers, as Amazon and Walmart have illustrated. The redesign, in k...

Walmart is planning a grand experiment for the holiday season: same-day delivery service in select markets for certain products purchased from its online store. There will be about 5,000 products -- including flat-panel TVs, computers, office equipment and cameras -- that can be delivered on the sam...

Cord-cutters now have a new option for content-viewing -- and possibly a major one at that. Google said Monday it was updating its Google TV platform, allowing users to buy or rent movies, TV shows and music through the Google Play store. Titles available on Google Play can be searched via its TV &a...

Another day, another clue unearthed about the smaller iPad Apple is supposedly developing. This time, component suppliers in Asia have reportedly tipped Apple's hand, revealing that they have received orders millions of the 7.85-inch tablets in the fourth quarter. The "iPad mini," as it has been dub...

Dish Network is abandoning plans to develop Blockbuster into astreaming video service that would directly compete with Netflix, company founder and chairman Charlie Ergen said in an interview. Dish acquired the video rental chain for $320 million in April of 2011, months after Blockbuster filed for ...

The words "software audit" can strike fear into even the most unflappable business executive's heart. Just as the sight of a police cruiser on the freeway compels all but the most foolhardy to slow down immediately, for most organizations the mere possibility of a vendor audit prompts a flurry of an...

It isn't too hard to see what Facebook users Like, but on Thursday reports surfaced online about something few if any users would find likeable. It appears that sending links via private messages through the social network results in extra Likes for the link targets -- never mind that the link you'...

Google and the American Association of Publishers, whose members are 300 of America's largest publishers, have settled their 7-year-old legal dispute over digitizing books for Google Books. The settlement will give Google access to publishers' journals and books that are in copyright, for its Google...

Discussions on Facebook's IPO and inability to market successfully have been a topic of discussion for months. Sure, Facebook has a reach of nearly a billion users, but until it can be successfully monetized, is investing in Facebook commerce a boom or a bust? The real discussion is not about Facebo...

As promised last month, Facebook is beginning a purge of so-called fake Likes from its social network. These are Likes that have been generated by malware, fake accounts or bulk purchase services. When Facebook announced its initiative last month, it theorized that less than 1 percent of Likes on an...

If Twitter were a child, it would be the last one at the dinner table, eating its food on its own schedule -- never mind that everyone else had finished. To wit: Not too long ago it was still resisting pressure to roll out advertising until it was good and ready. Now, that same stubbornness is on di...

IBM launched a major initiative on Wednesday with the goal of targeting middle-market companies via their managed service providers. Increasingly, middle market companies are turning to companies that deliver technology solutions on a pay-as-you-go-model, said Mike McClurg, IBM's VP of global mid-ma...

Comcast has grown and changed so much over the last 15 years that many expect this wave to continue. It may, but for that to happen Comcast must realize the marketplace is changing and steer through the upcoming rapids. Can it do that? Back in the 1990s, Comcast was a small cable television company....

Staples is joining the ranks of big box retailers that want to push deeper into an activity that historically has been of secondary importance to them -- e-commerce. That is not to say that retailers such as Walmart or Target have been absent from the online sales space. Quite the contrary, in fact....