E-Commerce

Vertical search, seen by many analysts as the next massive market opportunity in the search space, is quickly becoming one of the most crowded, with a host of new launches in recent days. In the past two weeks alone, LookSmart launched a group of five vertical search tools and promised more, Yahoo u...

Since NTT DoCoMo successfully launched its i-mode service in 1998, there have been varying degrees of hype about the future of mobile content and the revenue potential of applications run on wireless data networks. Early versions of wireless application protocol (WAP) in Europe and North America did...

A report recommending that VeriSign is well positioned to remain in charge of the ".net" domain name registries is coming under repeated criticism, as the Internet's international governing body finds itself in the eye of yet another controversy. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbe...

Search engine Google marked the one-year anniversary of the debut of its much-hyped Web-based e-mail program by boosting the free storage it gives users to a massive 2 gigabytes and promising to continue to move the bar higher as users' needs expand. The move doubles the original 1 GB storage that c...

Even before the news was officially announced by Hewlett-Packard yesterday, the speculation had begun on the wisdom of the company's choice of NCR's Mark Hurd as its new CEO. Hurd, 48, who resigned his position has president and CEO after a 25-year career at NCR, will take over the spot Carly Fiorin...

EBay has moved closer to scoring a major victory in a long-running legal case after the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a finding that patents the auction giant has been found guilty of violating should be revoked. The Patent Office issued a preliminary finding suggesting that patents previo...

Google raised eyebrows again with its latest acquisition, the purchase of a privately held software firm that specializes in Web analytics. The search engine giant said it bought San Diego, California-based Urchin Software for an undisclosed sum and said it would make the firm's analytical and on-de...

Users of Yahoo's free instant messaging service have been targeted by a phishing attack, one of the first widespread attempts to use the messaging medium to pilfer personal information. Targets of the scam are sent a link that, when clicked, takes users to what appears to be a Yahoo site that asks f...

In an atmosphere where Internet users are bombarded with pop-up advertisements and "in-your-face" sales techniques, marketers need to re-examine how they use the Internet to target customers with valuable messages, not infuriate them with intrusive or irrelevant information. In order to be successf...

The fallout from the dot-com collapse a few years ago might be fueling a new rush for businesses to build a presence on the World Wide Web. Network Solutions CEO Champ Mitchell sees small businesses setting up shop on the Internet in record numbers. As storefront welcome signs announce a growing gat...

The entertainment industry's aggressive legal campaign against illegal file swappers has dramatically reduced the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks but might also be pushing the development of alternative "privatized" approaches to sharing music and video. The Pew Internet & American Life Proje...

The Canadian government has proposed several copyright amendments that would serve to crack down on file sharing, preventing Internet users from freely swapping music, books and movies online. "This is terrific news," said Canadian Recording Industry Association President Graham Henderson. "Canada i...

Bidding to lay an early claim to an offbeat category of vertical search, Yahoo has launched a test version of a tool to help users find creative works that can be licensed through nontraditional means. Yahoo released a beta version of a search engine that seeks pictures, writings and other creative ...

In a deal that links rivals in the mobile operating system space, Symbian said it will work with Microsoft to enable hand-held devices using its operating system to work with the popular Outlook e-mail program. The licensing deal will enable UK-based Symbian-loaded hand-helds to read e-mail and rece...

The war for Web users' eyeballs, hearts and minds -- being fought on numerous battlefields from search to instant messaging -- turned its attention back to the e-mail front today as Yahoo announced it would boost the storage of its free Web e-mail service to 1 GB. The massive storage capability -- f...