E-Commerce

In a bid to cut out the middleman and drive its own Web traffic, eBay said Monday it would launch a partner network that will replace affiliate relationships the auction site has long relied on to get users to its site. The eBay Partner Network will launch April 1 and give publishers and other partn...

Microsoft announced it will buy advertising management solutions provider Rapt, moving to help smaller online publishers cash in on the growth of online ads just a day after Google launched a service to do the same thing. Rapt provides what it calls "advertising yield management solutions" -- produc...

Sweden, long the home of Internet pirates, may not be a safe haven for them any more. The Swedish government is working on legislation that will force Internet service providers to disclose IP addresses used for illegal file-sharing to the legal owners of those rights. However, the owners of the rig...

Executives from Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly met face-to-face earlier this week but apparently did not make significant progress on a deal for the software giant to purchase the struggling Web portal. Citing unnamed sources close to the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the meetin...

Search engine optimization experts pretty much agree that there are a few important steps to improving your search engine rankings and, surprisingly, no technical knowledge is required for any of them. Step No. 1: Incorporate keywords into the title tag. This is the number one factor in achieving hi...

Cable television's big edge on its satellite rivals may be eroding a bit, if DirecTV's plan to offer on-demand programming works out. On Thursday, DirecTV said it is testing an on-demand service for movies and other TV programming and planning a formal launch of the VOD service by the end of June. D...

In an early sign of the expanded presence Google intends to have in the online ad world now that it has closed on DoubleClick, the search giant Thursday launched a Web advertising management tool aimed at smaller publishers. The company formally announced Google Ad Manager after several months in te...

Net neutrality would make it harder for the movie industry to fight piracy, Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, told attendees at the movie industry's annual ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. Net neutrality is "a clever name," Glickman said. "But at the end of...

Time Warner's AOL will buy the social network Bebo for $850 million in cash, acquiring a worldwide user base of 40 million as well as a developer-friendly platform. Bebo was known to be shopping for a buyer, but the move came as something of a surprise because the social networking site already has ...

Have you watched the news lately? "Credit markets deteriorate." "Housing foreclosures at 25 year high." "Unemployment on the rise." "Weakest U.S. dollar in decades." "Consumer confidence declining." It's pretty clear there could be some nasty surprises for businesses, and marketers in particular, i...

The House Judiciary Committee held a panel hearing on the issue of net neutrality Tuesday, hearing testimony from such diverse interests as a rock band, an abortion rights advocacy group and the Christian Coalition of America. The unlikely trio converged on the Hill to call for legislation that woul...

TiVo and Google have struck a deal that will enable the digital video recorder maker's users to watch Web-based YouTube videos on their television sets. The service will be available later this year to consumers who own its Series 3 devices connected to the Internet through a broadband link, TiVo sa...

Think of this scene: A woman walks into a high-end department store on Fifth Avenue. As she enters, a salesperson rushes up to her, shouting: "Welcome back, Ms. Smith. Last time you were here, you bought some makeup. I bet you want to buy some perfume today, right?" Web-based commerce has made mass...

The European Commission has given its long-awaited blessing to Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick. Coming nearly a month ahead of an established April 2 deadline, the decision rested on the EC's findings that the merger would not hurt consumers or im...

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said his media company won't get into a bidding war with Microsoft for the right to take over Web portal Yahoo. During a keynote speech at the Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch suggested the $44.6 billion offer Microsoft made for Yahoo was too rich for his com...