E-Commerce

Viral marketing may be relatively new on the Internet, having emerged roughly a decade ago in its high-tech form, but it's by no means a novel promotional technique, and it certainly doesn't depend on technology. "Viral marketing is about generating buzz," Orvel Ray Wilson, coauthor of the legendary...

Following a 10-day tiff in which eBay pulled out of Google AdWords, the online auctioneer has apparently set its grievances aside and on Friday returned to the pay-per-click advertising program. "We are now slowly turning AdWords back on, in a much more limited way than before," the company said. "W...

With the dust still settling from the abrupt departure of CEO Terry Semel, Yahoo said Sunday it would revamp its advertising sales unit, merging its search and display operations into a single team. The company announced the changes along with news of the departure of its longtime advertising displa...

Buyers are naturally cautious when considering whether or not to make a purchase from unfamiliar merchants. Even if this anxiety is not justified, the effect on online retailers is often detrimental. Shopper anxiety creates a complicated challenge for online merchants, especially ones without nation...

EU regulators said they would expand their ongoing probe into the privacy issues first raised about search engine giant Google to include other major search tools. The decision of the European Commission's data watchdog group to broaden its probe into the privacy implications of rapidly evolving sea...

If you have a super brand, then let the whole world see it. If you have absolute 100 percent global ownership of that brand, then prove it. A quick search on Google will get you started. Many of today's best-known brands may still be threatened by a lack of exclusivity. They may have logos, unique d...

This past May, the country of Estonia was hit hard by what its authorities called a "virtual war." This war took the form of an attack on the country's computer infrastructure. Many governmental and commercial sites were hit. The attacks on the country's commerce seemed to focus on the country's med...

Have you ever walked into a big box store and seen scores of half-full shopping carts scattered throughout the aisles? It would seem unlikely, but for e-commerce retailers, abandoned carts are more common than you think. Shopping cart abandonment has existed since the dawn of the e-cart, but how can...

Regulators in Europe have given the green light to a planned Internet joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.: a Web video repository seen as a competitor to Google's YouTube. The yet-to-be-named venture -- first announced in March following weeks of speculation -- is expected to launch s...

The three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court has upheld a ruling that grants extensive new privacy protections for e-mail users. It is an ambitious decision -- said to be the first for the Circuit Courts -- and one that is almost surely headed to the Supreme Court for review. In Warshak v. Unite...

News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch has offered to swap the wildly popular social networking site MySpace in exchange for a stake in portal-in-flux Yahoo. Murdoch reportedly approached Yahoo with the offer of giving the portal ownership of MySpace in exchange for a 30 percent ownership stake of the com...

Shares of Best Buy slid by more than 5 percent Tuesday after the electronics retail giant posted lower earnings and moderated its outlook for the rest of the year, citing a less profitable mix of hot-selling products. Best Buy's profit for its first quarter was $192 million, or 39 cents per share, 1...

Terry Semel resigned from his CEO post at Yahoo late Monday, stepping aside to let cofounder Jerry Yang take the helm as the portal looks to keep shareholders happy, regain its early dot-com glory and better compete with rival Google. Semel arrived at the Internet company in 2001 with high hopes tha...

Police in the UK have broken up a Web-based child pornography and pedophilia network, rescuing 31 children in the process and charging some 700 people worldwide with crimes. Two hundred of the suspects and 15 of the children were located in Britain, according to the UK's Child Exploitation and Onlin...

Blockbuster will offer high-definition movies in the Blu-ray format in all of its stores, the company said, favoring Sony's approach for next-generation DVDs and dealing a blow to the rival HD DVD format. The movie rental giant will continue to offer consumers the option of getting HD-DVD movies thr...