E-Commerce

'Tis the season to read about e-tailers' dreams of record-breaking profits during the holiday shopping frenzy. Meanwhile, amid anxious promotions and analyst promises, there are plenty of credit card companies with their own holiday hopes. Remember, merchants pay tiny transaction fees that add up to...

Online holiday sales are on a pace to crack US$26 billion this year -- an 18 percent leap over last year, according to JupiterResearch in New York City. "Reports we've seen from Mastercard and Visa indicate that online transactions are up sharply during this period relative to last year," Jupiter Se...

Hoping to bridge the gap between traditional cable television and the Internet, three heavyweights from the two fields said they had forged a partnership to develop ways to make the two data-transport channels more open to each other. Comcast said it would work with Cisco Systems and Nortel as the f...

It's the sixth week of the all-important online holiday shopping season and the latest stats are in from Nielsen//NetRatings. The Internet media and market researcher declared today that online holiday shopping has grown 33 percent year-over-year, according to its Holiday eShopping Index. The Nielse...

Further boosting its portfolio of social-networking properties while underscoring a push to refine search results by using Web site descriptions, Yahoo has acquired Del.icio.us, a site that enables users to store and share Web site bookmarks. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Privately held ...

Seeking to take advantage of the many exciting online bargains this holiday shopping season? Be cautious about those e-mail promotions. Some of them contain more than deep discounts and free shipping offers -- they may contain malware. Security vendors and messaging companies alike report heightened...

Yahoo has launched a service that attempts to connect those with questions to a community that might have the answers. Yahoo Answers offers 23 categories in which to ask a question not easily answered by a Web search. "When it comes to locating facts, such as the capital of India, Web search rocks.

Taking aim at VoIP leader and new eBay acquisition Skype -- and to a lesser extent at established phone companies -- Yahoo is poised to roll out an Internet calling service that will enable low-cost calls between computers and traditional phones. The service, set to launch in the next few days, acco...

Verizon is upping the wireless broadcasting ante in a partnership with CBS Television, announcing that Verizon's V Cast multimedia service will stream some of CBS Television's most watched programs, including "CSI," "Survivor," David Letterman and "Entertainment Tonight," beginning this month. CBS ...

Research by the consultancy A.T. Kearney's telecom practice indicates that the Federal Communications Commission's proposal for "a la carte" pricing of cable TV programming may have an adverse impact on the development of Internet TV and Internet Telephony. Sweeping changes in telecom regulation cou...

Time Warner has apparently decided not to sell off part or all of America Online, but instead is looking for a new search and advertising partner and may be putting the finishing touches on a deal to switch its search provider from Google to Microsoft's MSN. Despite months of reports and rumors that...

Media giant News Corp. is looking to weigh in bigger online, telling investors this week that it intends to build on the success of its MySpace.com site, will show some of its television programming exclusively on the Internet, and will try its hand at Web search. There was speculation that the sear...

Summer is behind us, but recent memories of credit card processing breaches are still haunting security-conscious consumers, safety-minded merchants and bustling banks. While CardSystems Solutions made media headlines in June after a computer virus captured the private information of millions of con...

Liberty Media, parent company of the QVC home shopping network, became the latest traditional media company to make a strong push into the Internet space, buying food-based e-tailer Provide Commerce, Inc. in a deal worth US$477 million. The all-cash deal gives Liberty Media control of Provide's fami...

In a bid to boost the profile of its subscription streaming music offering by making it available to all computer users, RealNetworks said it is testing a Web-based version of its Rhapsody service. Making a version of Rhapsody work with most Web browsers would make the service more mobile -- users c...