E-Commerce

Blogs and online review sites have proliferated in recent years, as ostensibly "with-it" influencers offer "independent" reviews, endorsements and testimonials that increasingly drive consumer traffic to a wide variety of product sellers. However, as consumers are learning with great disappointment,...

Some positive reviews and a humorous TV ad campaign have helped, but online measurement service comScore is providing Microsoft's new search engine even more wind beneath its Bing with new statistics indicating gains in Microsoft search sites' penetration and their share of search results pages. com...

Unlike the Amazons and Targets of the world, smaller e-commerce businesses understandably have limited resources to channel into infrastructure. The past decade of e-commerce has been a story of small companies using online and Internet-delivered services to "act like the big boys." To date, the lev...

The products that fueled first-generation e-commerce -- books, software and music, to name a few -- are all simple to understand items that can be easily shipped to consumers. Today, we are at the outset of a second wave of online growth, as consumers push beyond these simple transactions to researc...

Microsoft has initiated a civil lawsuit in the Western District of Seattle seeking $750,000 in damages from three individuals in Vancouver, British Columbia, for committing click fraud. The three alleged fraudsters are two brothers and a mother -- Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen -- who, accord...

In the midst of the U.S. economic crisis, cautious spending and downsizing have left the retail industry in dire straits. The Commerce department recently reported that retail sales continued to fall in March -- down 1.1 percent from February's sales figures. March 2009 saw a 9 percent decline compa...

Many local governments have initiated class action lawsuits in an effort to compel the collection of sales taxes on hotel room markups. Online travel companies have responded to these cases along three main lines of defense, marshaling both procedural and substantive arguments. Among their defenses ...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It's a fact that might not bring a lot of comfort to consumers and businesses, but it's true: The methods for protecting e-commerce transactions haven't changed a great deal since online shopping became a viable option in the early '90s. SSL and TSL encryption are the protocols that slap on that lit...

It looks as though the Southern District of New York has opened a new front in the war on Internet gambling. Federal prosecutors have asked Citibank, Wells Fargo and two smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to two companies that process payouts on behalf of four offshore poker sites, ...

Social marketing offers a new way to interact with consumers, but aside from being another channel, it requires a different mindset to achieve results. This is Web 2.0, where the consumer is in charge of the message and will angrily resist big brand pressure and broadcast marketing. Content needs to...

It applies to sports and smartphones: If you're an underdog, you will always be compared to the reigning champs until you knock them off their pedestal. The mission, then, for Palm during Saturday's retail launch of its Pre smartphone was relatively simple: Get as close as possible to an iPhone-styl...

The FTC has shut down an ISP that it painted as the worst of the worst in cyberspace. Pricewert, which has done business under a variety of names including "3FN" and "APS Telecom," sought out criminals seeking to distribute illegal electronic content including child porn, violent porn and bestiality...

On the front line of the e-commerce tax are online travel companies such as Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline, Travelocity and Orbitz. The issue is whether the OTCs should be collecting hotel room occupancy taxes on the difference in the price between what the OTC pays the hotel operator and the amount...