E-Commerce

After months of battling over the extent to which Comcast was blocking user access to the P2P file-sharing service BitTorrent, the two companies have decided to work together to craft solutions to ensure full access. Comcast plans to work directly with BitTorrent and others in the Web services and I...

Will you add me? Have you written on my wall? Are we LinkedIn? Social networks are not only changing the way we speak to our friends, they are influencing our actions and behaviors. There is no question that social networks are becoming the networking standard as e-mail replaced snail mail years ago...

Yahoo shares moved higher by more than 3 percent Tuesday after an analyst upgraded the stock, suggesting that Microsoft was likely to sweeten its offer for the Web portal. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney upgraded Yahoo shares to a buy on Monday, arguing that the strategic value of Yahoo made a more l...

The U.S. Department of Justice has cleared the way for competing satellite radio services to merge into one company amid fears that the combined service would create an unstoppable monopoly. Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio first announced intentions to merge in February of 2007 -- 10 y...

Content and advertising have enjoyed a longstanding, symbiotic, codependent relationship -- although not necessarily in the unhealthy sense of the word. Content publishers need advertisers to pay the bills while advertisers simultaneously need content to create traffic they hope to draw to their goo...

Google has quietly unveiled a search-within-a-site feature on its main Web search engine, giving users the ability to refine searches before going to a merchant or publisher's page. The company launched search-within-a-site on March 5 after several days of testing, according to a posting to the offi...

From our lobby windows, I can see the ongoing construction of the much-hyped Trump International Hotel & Tower. It is slated to be 96 floors tall upon completion, and with its sleek, stainless steel facade and glassy, closed curves, it will be the perfect complement to the city's ubiquitous skyl...

Only weeks after having won a digital format battle against HD DVD, Sony finds itself entangled in a legal fight over the technology behind Blu-ray. The ITC will hear a case filed by a retired university professor with a 50-year engineering career against Sony, Motorola and more than 25 other compan...

The Internet has become the ultimate democracy in many ways, leveling the publishing playing field for writers with blogging software, allowing musical acts to distribute music without a record label and giving video producers outlets such as YouTube. With e-commerce outlets like eBay, anyone can se...

The Software and Information Industry Association filed eight more lawsuits against eBay sellers the group says are hawking pirated versions of software from Adobe, bringing to 17 the number of suits filed so far this year. The SIIA said it filed suits against sellers based in Arizona, California, C...

Fraud is big business. Well-funded, well-orchestrated, sophisticated fraud rings aggressively change tactics and invent new technologies to cash in on the unprotected assets awaiting plunder. Every organization that provides individual service to its customers, employees, members or community is fac...

Think combating fraud is not of paramount concern to online merchants? The topic was front and center at the Merchant Risk Council's annual conference held in early March. Online merchants gathered there were eager to get a deeper level of understanding of how better to combat fraud -- fraudulent c...

That's it. Dim the lights and start counting your pennies -- if you haven't already begun. We're officially in a recession, according to Warren Buffett, or headed into one, as everyone and their mothers seem to be saying. E-tailers shouldn't panic when conducting business during slower economic peri...

The phone rings and John answers, "Accounts payable, how may I help you?" It's the fourth call John has received from ABC Supply this week. Why? ABC Supply wants payment for an invoice that was sent more than 60 days ago. How is this possible? Actually, it isn't surprising. There is tremendous va...

The Recording Industry Association of America has been filing and threatening lawsuits all across America in its war to stop illegal file sharing and piracy of music owned by its partner record labels. Many individuals that have faced litigation from the RIAA in the last several years have settled b...