E-Commerce

Amazon.com will launch a new streaming video service in the next "several weeks," CEO Jeff Bezos said Wednesday. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's three-day D6: All Things Digital conference in California, Bezos also said his company is "very serious" about music and movies, and is currently rea...

In a nod to the growing need to track mobile users for marketing purposes, Internet research firm comScore has acquired M:Metrics, a top provider of mobile user data, for $44.3 million in cash and 50,000 stock options. The deal extends comScore's measurement and research reach beyond the traditional...

Selling Facebook to Microsoft would not be the best way to fulfill its mission of enabling people to connect with one another, said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social network. During the D6: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif., Zuckerberg was asked whether he would consider...

A group of Belgian newspapers that won a court ruling against Google last year over its practice of linking to their content is now asking a court to award up to $77 million in damages. Copiepresse reportedly asked a Brussels court to force Google to pay between $51.5 million and $77 million in dama...

EXPERT ADVICE

The Positive 'R' Words

The current and unavoidable recession that is impacting the United States, slowly affecting Canada and Mexico and spreading its wings toward the farthest corners of the world, is nothing to be either afraid of or surprised by. It is just one of those cycles that appears every decade or so. Some will...

Microsoft believes it can grow the market for its Windows Mobile operating system by at least 50 percent in each of the next two years as the market for smartphones explodes globally. The software giant could sell as many as 20 million copies of Windows Mobile during the soon-to-end fiscal year, alm...

Borders officially cut its ties with Amazon.com on Tuesday, with the rollout of its long-planned solo e-commerce site. The book retailer announced last March that it would go it alone online after teaming with Amazon for six years. Borders is now striving to differentiate itself from its online comp...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

End of the Road for E-Commerce Patents?

For years, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents covering e-commerce business methods, and companies have exploited such patents to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In one famous example, Amazon.com sued Barnes & Noble just before the 1999 holiday season, alleg...

Yahoo has postponed its annual shareholders' meeting, which had been originally scheduled to take place on July 3. Now, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, that meeting will take place at the end of July in order to give regulators time to review paperwork related...

Broadcast, cablecast, simulcast, webcast, podcast, vodcast, mobilecast -- the melding of the realms of "lean back" and "lean in" technology can mean coming attractions for business-to-business marketing communications and video news generation -- if done straight-up, i.e., correctly and transparentl...

Michael Hollick isn't really a Balkan criminal -- he just plays one in a video game that happens to be one of the fastest-selling ever, generating at least $600 million in sales over the last three weeks. Yet while Rockstar Games' "Grand Theft Auto IV" has enjoyed its wild success, Hollick -- an act...

In its most aggressive and creative effort yet to challenge Google in search and search advertising, Microsoft has unveiled a plan to give cash rebates to consumers who use its Live Search and end up making online purchases. Live Search cashback essentially shares advertising revenue with end users,...

SOA is replacing Web services, which took the spot of object-oriented programming, which usurped the client/server computer, which supplanted mainframe computing as the primary way that companies design their applications. As the latest transition takes place, SOA is encountering some of the problem...

Bidding to grab an early share of the rapidly growing mobile advertising market, Microsoft on Tuesday announced a broad initiative to drive both display and search ads on mobile devices. The software giant will immediately make available display advertising on its Windows Live for mobile platform an...

It all used to be so simple -- at least for retailers. Back in the day, it was enough to have your catalog online; then interactivity and rich media came along. Now, we're in an age of personalization, where buyer patterns are predicted and mapped to up-sell and cross-sell options. The Internet has...

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