E-Commerce

Microsoft pulled back the curtain on its next generation console, Xbox 360, and announced some impressive features, but that and the fact that it beat its rivals to the public's eye, may not give it an edge in the market, one analyst said. "The market is going to be more evenly split this round -- r...

Google has purchased upstart social networking site Dodgeball.com, a move that could bring together its own social networking efforts, its bid to gain more control over communications tools -- including in the mobile world -- and its ambitions to be more of a Web portal than a search firm, all at on...

Eyeing enhancements to its instant messaging (IM) platform as it vies for users with AOL and Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN unit has purchased a firm that provides alerts through IM. Microsoft did not disclose the purchase price for MessageCast, a privately held firm whose broadcast messaging system works w...

Microsoft announced today that Philips Electronics has agreed to use its software for playing digital audio and video on its semiconductors and consumer electronics products. Analysts called the deal a significant win for Microsoft. Under the terms of the non-exclusive deal, Philips said it will sup...

Yahoo has added a subscription service to its digital music offerings as the portal bids to use its vast resources, name recognition and experience in e-commerce to shake up what is rapidly becoming one of the most crowded niches in online business. Yahoo Music Unlimited, as the service is known, op...

Coming off its best year ever in terms of sales growth, the mobile handset industry is set to see slowing rates of expansion going forward as established markets become saturated with cell phone users, according to a new report. Research firm IDC said mobile phone shipments grew 34 percent in 2004 t...

Consumer spending on broadband-delivered online services -- from streaming music and video to voice over Internet protocol phone calling -- more than doubled last year, according to a new report that bears promising news for telecommunications carriers as well as e-commerce companies and their conte...

The trend for industries to consolidate through major mergers and acquisitions has made its way back to the e-commerce space, with No. 2 online brokerage E*Trade Financial reportedly posed to make a surprise US$5.5 billion bid to buy smaller rival Ameritrade. Neither company has formally acknowledge...

The dot-com crash that saw hundreds of start-up businesses on the Internet close up shop in 1998 and 1999 is not discouraging new Net entrepreneurs. A record number of domain name sales in 2004 shows that business presence on the Internet is stronger than ever. A domain name that reflects an organiz...

Spending on Internet advertising in 2005 will grow even faster than previously believed, a market research firm said, although it also predicted a slowdown in growth rates starting next year. EMarketer cited the booming first-quarter earnings results for the likes of Google and Yahoo as reason to re...

Yahoo, racing to stay ahead of its competitors who are eying the same technological niche and its potentially deep well of advertising dollars, has launched a public version of its video search tool. Yahoo Video Search, which had been in beta form since December, was formally launched by the portal ...

Google has filed a patent application for improvements to its widely used news search and aggregation feature, one that some say will result in a future version of the still-beta product favoring corporate-backed news sites. Currently, Google's news search returns results based on how recently a sto...

In what some see as a hint of more fallout to come from the first major enforcement action against spyware being planted through otherwise legitimate Web sites, Ask Jeeves has found it necessary to respond to accusations that its various sites enable downloading of unwanted programs. Meanwhile, the ...

The Internet might be turning into the ultimate window shopping experience for online shoppers. Greater sophistication with browsing is making consumers more prone to comparison shop online before actually buying. Internet shoppers are more prone to visiting 10 or more Web sites before returning to ...

A plan by search giant Google to digitize vast stacks of library books in the UK and the United States is drawing the ire of European librarians, who want to launch a project of their own. The national libraries of some 19 countries on the European continent have signed onto an alternative plan that...