E-Commerce

In the wake of widespread complaints about fee increases on sellers, eBay has said it will reduce some of the charges and boost customer service in the U.S. and Canada. However, the online auction giant is standing firm on its move to hike Final Value fees on inventory format listings and Store subs...

Looking to add to the arsenal of content it searches -- and on which it can sell advertising space -- and to take part in one of the Web's hot trends, Ask Jeeves reportedly is in the process of acquiring Bloglines, a company that provides free news- and blogger-aggregation services. Ask Jeeves has y...

We've come a long way, baby! Indeed, e-commerce has evolved from online billboards to a fully functional, personalized shopping experience over the past decade. While there were admittedly a few bumps along the road, the path from 1994 through the 2004 holiday shopping season is full of crucial mile...

Well, we have yet another definition to add to our technology lexicon: click hijacking. With the advent of powerful and profitable search engines, like Google, Internet schemers have come up with yet another way to illegally make a buck. This article looks at this new phenomenon, what gave rise to ...

Bidding to keep its edge in the rapidly evolving search space, Yahoo has started to test what it calls a "contextual" search function aimed at helping users find more relevant results. The service, known as Y!Q, is now available in beta form. Users can download a "demo bar" from Yahoo and also use t...

In a move likely to spur more speculation about its overall strategy for expansion, Google has won approval to become a registrar of domain names. The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently granted Google registrar status, giving it permission to sell specific doma...

In a reminder of a lingering threat to the growth of online commerce, a new report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says identity theft -- such as phishing over the Internet -- continued to be the most prevalent form of consumer fraud reported to authorities last year. In fact, complaints ste...

Internet marketers have to walk a narrow line in pitching messages to potential customers during online visits. While marketers try to gather useful customer information to provide follow-up targeted messages, consumers often provide false answers to personal questions or will leave the Web site wit...

A clear demand for mobile multimedia services is emerging, according to new consumer studies conducted for cell phone maker Nokia, and analysts said adoption of the services is set to take off in the coming years and will drive new form factors. According to the studies by MORI, a UK-based market re...

Ninety-one percent of American consumers will walk out of a store and shop elsewhere if they cannot find the particular gift they want, according to a recent Sun Microsystems survey on consumer shopping patterns. Adults who shop online are equally unforgiving of online retailers that do not have the...

As part of a shift toward more popular community features, America Online will stop providing direct access to Usenet newsgroups in February. Usenet is a worldwide bulletin board system that can be accessed through the Internet or through online services. The Usenet contains more than 14,000 forums,...

The e-mail mistake. Anybody using a computer has been there and done that. You add your name to a business message and click the Send button. The message leaves your screen just as your eye catches a glimpse of an error. It used to be too late; that message was gone for good -- the Uh-Oh e-mail! No ...

In a move to compete in the growing market for local search services, Amazon.com today launched "A9.com Yellow Pages," a new local business search directory complete with photos. Analysts said if the concept takes off, it could expand the world of e-commerce. Amazon's "Block View" technology aims to...

Using e-mail for personal and business correspondence has become as commonplace today as the VCR and the office water cooler. All three items are often taken for granted. Consumers have come to expect certain constants when it comes to computing: antivirus and firewall software are must-have securit...

Speakeasy, a national broadband Internet service provider (ISP), said it will be the first to distribute a customized version of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser to its customers. The development was immediately being called significant because it stands to open up an entirely new distributi...