E-Commerce

Two committees within the U.S. House of Representatives have approved a bill put forth by Democrats this week as an alternative to the broad surveillance legislation rushed through in August to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Known as the "Restore Act," short for the Respon...

This past July, a joint FBI/Chinese effort seized about $500 million worth of counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec software. The seizure and arrests came at a time when our government was pressuring China to do something about its traditional tolerance of software piracy. This was no small seizure and...

Online marketplace eBay paid too much for the Internet phone service Skype, but its head was in the right place when it made the buy, according to a report released Tuesday by a major technology research firm. "eBay's September 2005 acquisition of telephony vendor Skype was overpriced by any direct ...

Today, in order to have a commanding e-commerce presence with universal access, domain names must be treated like very special golden keys. Without an effective domain name, the entire exercise of Internet-centric commerce becomes almost useless. Super success in cyber-branding lies in the sophistic...

Did you hit any garage sales when you were growing up? Most likely you didn't do it to save the planet but rather to make money or shop for bargains. Regardless of the motivation, a secondary result -- one with far grander, long-term benefits -- is that a lot of old items sold were kept out of the t...

Following its acquisition of Stumbleupon earlier this year, eBay is wading deeper into the social networking waters with a collection of its own micro-communities designed to foster interaction and sharing among members, the company announced Wednesday. The home-grown social networking feature, dubb...

Google on Wednesday launched the fifth version of its enterprise search appliance with more security, better internal search result relevance and a wider reach across enterprise content management systems. The Version 5.0 upgrades of the Google Search Appliance allow business managers to search acro...

Google has reached a deal to buy a Swedish firm that makes a social networking application that lets users blast their extended networks of friends with micro-blogs whether they're on a PC or a mobile phone. Google did not disclose the terms of its acquisition of Jaiku, which is based in Helsinki; n...

Google is introducing ad-supported video clips from YouTube -- what it calls "video units" -- to its AdSense platform, one of many steps in a strategy designed to glean a return on its massive investment in the video-sharing Web site. Google is working with select YouTube content partners, including...

NBC Universal will purchase Oxygen Media, the operator of a cable channel aimed at women, for $925 million, a move that dovetails with its 2006 purchase of the iVillage online network for $600 million. The acquisition gives NBC a cable channel that reaches 74 million homes and offers advertisers a f...

It's no secret that an awful lot of TV shows and movies can be found on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Kazaa. It's also no secret that the producers of those shows really, really hate it when people share them without permission. Is there a way for content makers to cash in on what is a c...

The legal saga of the first file-sharing lawsuit brought by the record labels to make it before a jury isn't over just yet. Jammie Thomas, who was ordered to pay $222,000 after a jury found her responsible for posting two dozen songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network, announced through her MySpace b...

Once a consumer has committed to a purchase of a particular brand and model of product, maximizing the momentum of his Web research and purchase experience is a great opportunity for a manufacturer. However, it's also a tremendous challenge. Best practices have found that as consumers are searching ...

These days, just about every business -- from the corner store to Wal-Mart -- has a Web presence. While the Internet's vast expanse provides companies with the ability to reach more potential customers, it also pits them against more competitors than ever before. As a result, it has become increasin...

In one of the most sweeping domestic law enforcement actions against online child pornography in recent times, New Jersey officials arrested 41 people and charged them with possession or distribution of graphic images of child molestation. Dubbed "Operation Silent Shield," the roundup was the culmin...