E-Commerce

New York Gov. David Paterson has proposed a 4 percent tax on digital music downloads and other "digitally delivered entertainment services." The "iPod Tax," as it's become known, is just one of many new taxes the governor has proposed in an effort to close the state's multibillion-dollar budget gap....

Move over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and make room for yet another retail-inspired shopping event. Free Shipping Day is here -- or rather, it will be here on Thursday, Dec. 18 -- the last day someone can order a gift online and have it guaranteed to arrive on Christmas Eve with free shipping. Fr...

Social media outsourcing will be the next big business opportunity for India after business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing, contends Gaurav Mishra, Yahoo fellow in residence at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. "Some functions are best handled by a ...

Google: The name conjures up images of a brilliant company, one able to anticipate customer desires and consistently deliver leading-edge technology more effectively than competitors. Having captured and kept a commanding lead in desktop search, Google has now set its sights on cell phones and mobil...

Even sophisticated ad buyers can make mistakes: ignoring target demographics' tastes and sensibilities; using archaic assumptions when measuring the success of an online campaign; and failing to plan for follow-up activities such as fulfillment. Those are fairly basic errors. There are also some sub...

One of Yahoo's largest shareholders is urging the beleaguered Internet company's board to sell its search assets to Microsoft. Ivory Investment Management, a Los Angeles-based hedge fund, on Wednesday submitted a letter to Yahoo's board proposing a deal whereby Yahoo would sell its search assets to ...

The familiar social media paradigm of "Listen ... Learn ... Engage ... Earn" has a correlative imperative: "Publish or Perish," and enterprises probably need to find someone else to do the job for them. But be really careful about whom you select. I've covered the specifics of B2B digital media rela...

Maybe you've seen more of them during your Christmas shopping jaunts at the neighborhood mall this holiday season than you did last year; people using smartphones while in stores to do Web searches on products, price comparisons, or even to place orders. It's a sight that Google hopes will soon be a...

How did Seattle become the home for technology companies that want to help you buy or sell ... a home? Sure, it's where Microsoft and Amazon are based, and it's a well-educated, tech-savvy community, and the University of Washington churns out more than its share of software engineers. But why real ...

Microsoft has tapped Qi Lu, a former Yahoo Search executive, to run its Internet unit. Lu, 47, left Yahoo in August after 10 years; he most recently served as vice president of engineering for the search and advertising technology group. At Microsoft, he will become the president of the online serv...

Microsoft earlier this week unveiled a new feature that gives instant rebates to some consumers who use its Live Search Cashback program to buy items from eBay. Usually, consumers must wait 60 days to get their rebates. The announcement of the new speedier payment feature came on the heels of a Blac...

A few weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson presented the blogosphere with an ad for its brand name pain reliever Motrin that was aimed at mothers who were experiencing back pain from carrying their babies around in slings. The backlash was swift. The ad struck many viewers as having a tone that mocked, ...

The old adage about a sucker being born every minute is no less true among respondents to spam. Dishonest people have always been trying to make a fast buck by duping others into confidence scams, and the Web has give those people an easy way to communicate with more potential marks. However, modern...

Cyber Monday is the biggest online shopping day of the year, but online retail experts say it may not be big enough this year to increase overall holiday sales compared to 2007. The November-December holiday shopping season will generate $29.2 billion in sales this year, the exact same figure as in ...

A variety of retail-watching experts are churning out Black Friday sales facts, figures and customer inclinations, and while it wasn't a rip-roaring Black Friday compared to previous years, it wasn't all that bad -- particularly for the hot-selling consumer electronics sector. Comparison shopping si...