E-Commerce

In the latest report from the front lines in the high-definition format wars, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures have both jumped with both feet into the HD DVD camp, the companies announced Monday. The commitment by the companies, both of which are owned by Viacom, will include all movies d...

Beefing up its presence in China as it faces off with Baidu.com in that fast-growing market, Google said Monday it had invested in a Chinese social networking startup. Google did not disclose any details of its investment in Tianya.cn, which has about 20 million registered users who turn to the site...

Brick-and-mortar merchandisers' shift from a product-centric to a customer-centric mentality is examined in a recent report from Gartner. By starting backwards from the known profiles of shoppers in every ZIP code, merchandisers can create extremely granular assortments for each store to increase sa...

Small to medium-sized e-commerce companies can go a long way toward marketing themselves online by doing some simple search-engine optimization and taking the time to foster some inbound links to their site. Both can be done without an advanced degree in computer science, and both can cost little or...

A Russian court acquitted Denis Kvasov, chief of now-closed online music site AllofMP3.com, of copyright violations in a case widely seen as a test of Russia's commitment to protecting intellectual property under global agreements. The site sold individual music tracks at below market value without ...

The competitive environment that characterizes today's broadband and value-added services landscape should certainly grow a variety of digital lifestyle products and services, including home networking. Consumers are also primary beneficiaries of increased competition among carriers. Case studies re...

If you're looking for a credit card and a pleasant experience on the Web, the place to go is Capital One -- at least, according to Web site evaluation firm Change Sciences Group. That's because when it comes to credit card cyber-stops, the "What's in your wallet?" folks have created a site that's ea...

Google's YouTube is seeking to depose high-profile comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as part of its defense of a $1 billion copyright infringement suit filed by Viacom, parent company of the Comedy Central network where they serve up their fake news and political digs. Stewart, who hosts "Th...

One of the hard realizations that most new e-commerce companies must make sooner or later is that simply creating a Web site does not mean customers will visit it. Sure, there are hundreds of millions of potential customers online, but there are also billions of other Web sites competing for their a...

Completing its largest acquisition ever, Microsoft closed its $6 billion purchase of digital advertising player aQuantive, then created a new business unit to encompass aQuantive and its three companies: Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlas Solutions and DRIVE Performance Solutions. Formed in 1997 and based ...

Google has begun offering users of its various Web services the option of getting more storage, but that additional capacity will come at a cost. Google will offer users of Gmail and Picasa, its online photo storage and sharing service, the chance to expand the amount of storage supporting their acc...

Universal Music Group will test selling music free of DRM technology, and it plans to make the tracks available through RealNetworks' Rhapsody service and other outlets -- but not through the iTunes Music Store. Universal becomes the second major record label after EMI to begin offering music withou...

"Due to exceptionally high volume, requests may be delayed up to 72 hours." That message may be mundane when posted at most Web sites, but when it's posted at an online bank, it's as dangerous as blood in shark-infested waters. That's because it's tantamount to every banker's worst nightmare: a run ...

Blockbuster will buy film download site Movielink, a bid by the largest video and DVD rental chain to assure it remains a key player in distribution of movies even when DVDs become less prevalent. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Blockbuster has been known to have been in talks with Movi...

E-commerce is an important sales channel to businesses of all sizes, but when it's a company's sole meal ticket, the stakes are even higher. Threats to Internet profits often lay hidden and customers rarely stop to point them out. "An increase in help-desk call volume is usually the first indicator ...