E-Commerce

Satellite radio providers XM and Sirius will offer consumers the ability to choose small bundles of stations if their proposed merger is approved by regulators, the companies said Monday. They announced the plan a day before they are expected to formally respond to a request for information from the...

The price war between movie rental companies Blockbuster and Netflix continued Sunday when Netflix slashed by $1 the price of two DVD rental subscription plans. The $1 reduction will benefit most of Netflix's 6 million customers because it affects two of its most popular rental packages, Netflix sai...

Automatic audio ads that co-opt the user's speakers to automatically play sounds and music are often intrusive and annoying and can even disrupt the workplace. The oft-cursed technique begs the question of whether advertisers can actually sell goods to a startled audience left leaping from their cha...

Microsoft managed to post a 7.3 percent increase in earnings for its fourth quarter, despite a mammoth $750 million charge relating to fixes to its Xbox 360 product, as strong enterprise sales helped the company surpass the $50 billion revenue mark for the fiscal year. The Redmond, Wash.-based compa...

A ruling by a federal court in a case involving an online roommate matching service will hamstring Web innovators, a civil liberties group argued this week in papers filed with the judicial panel. In a "friend of the court" brief submitted Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals in California, the Elect...

After months of controversy and global outcry, Google's proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick will undergo congressional scrutiny later this year in a planned closed hearing before the House of Representatives' Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL), ...

Google is expanding the size and scope of its newspaper advertising program to include users of its AdWords service. In the immediate term, the expansion will increase the number of marketers using Google's Print Ads service. In the long run, the move could help meld the once-disparate audiences to...

Yahoo reported financial results for the second quarter of 2007 Tuesday, bringing the company a rise in revenue over the same quarter of last year as well as a significant drop in profit. Overall revenues rose 8 percent for the quarter, up to $1.7 billion, while marketing services revenues rose $1.4

While looking for information about writing for Web pages, you simply cannot avoid the topic "keyword density." Let's start with a definition: Keyword density measures the percentage of keywords and key phrases compared to the total number of words in your Web page body. There are many opinions abo...

Revenue from search-related advertising on mobile phones will crack the $2 billion mark in 2011, according to a report released last week by a market and trend analysis firm. Search-related advertising -- which has made outfits like Google revenue powerhouses -- will grow mightily worldwide during t...

Answers Corp., which owns Answers.com, plans to acquire Dictionary.com for a cool $100 million, the company announced Monday. Technically, Answers will buy Lexico Publishing Group, the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. In June, Lexico's sites attracted 11.5 million unique mon...

Microsoft's search unit scored significant gains in June thanks to its newly launched Live Search Club, according to new data that also showed Google's share of the Web search market slipping below 50 percent. Google is still the dominant search player, according to data from comScore, accounting fo...

Google's Enterprise unit continued its recent barrage of product rollouts and other moves, unveiling Google Custom Search Business Edition, a paid version of its popular ad-supported site search tool. The service allows users to customize the search results page to match their Web sites' look and fe...

As the July 15 deadline for new Internet radio royalty rates to take effect sailed by in relative peace, most Internet radio webcasters remained up and running following initial results of compromise talks late last week between webcasters and SoundExchange. Most recently, SoundExchange, the arm of ...

Today's online shoppers may be more cautious than they were two years ago. Some are waiting up to 35 hours before completing a shopping cart transaction. A study of consumers' Internet buying habits suggests that online merchants face stiffer competition and new hurdles in closing sales over the Web...