E-Commerce

As part of a search industry move toward multi-media, Google today launched a new service that enables users to search the content of television programs. Google will let people search for text in closed-captioning of television shows on PBS, the NBA, Fox News and C-SPAN, among others. The news come...

Rumors that Google is actively developing its own browser -- talk that Google downplayed last fall -- have gained new life as the leading search engine hired the engineer most responsible for development of the Firefox browser. Ben Goodger, the lead programmer of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, wh...

If ignorance is bliss, then that would explain why so many Internet users are happy with the online search experience. A new survey by Pew Internet & American Life shows that while users are extremely satisfied with search engines, they are also strikingly unaware of which results are paid listi...

Popular style guides such as Strunk and White's 1918 classic The Elements of Style and the original 1906 Chicago Manual of Style were published before the advent of computers or e-mail. As such, their rules are not always relevant to the exigencies of e-commerce and electronic business communication...

Travelzoo, which came to be on the strength of dot-com promotional blitz that included stock giveaways and more recently became a rising star among e-commerce stocks, today said the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating stock market activity by some employees for possible insider...

Bidding to stoke sales in some of the biggest ticket items on its sprawling auction site, eBay has announced a deal to extend direct financing to buyers of automobiles on eBay Motors through Web-based firm E-Loan. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed, and for the time being, the pac...

Amazon.com is giving Web developers free access to data and technology to help them build applications for the online retailer's customers and sellers on its six global Web sites, the company said today. Andy Jassy, Amazon vice president of Web Services, said: "Some developers already have applicati...

Overstock.com was preparing for its biggest sales day ever. It was just days before the notorious Black Friday, traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the holiday season, and the discount online retailer was all set to break its previous year's sales record. And then it happened -- its in...

Multi-channel retailers were leaders in e-commerce growth in the latest holiday season, but a new study reveals significant opportunity gaps remain for these merchants. The first Evolution of the Multi-Channel Consumer (EMC2) study released yesterday was conducted by Inc., the e-tailing group, Fry a...

In a move to one-up rivals MSN and Yahoo in the online search wars, America Online today announced search innovations designed to let consumers find news, information, audio and video files, and products all in one place. Several new partnerships are also part of AOL's plan to expand its capabilitie...

Normally a Wall Street darling, eBay finds itself in the rare position of disappointing analysts and investors with its fourth quarter earnings report and its forecast for 2005 -- and this at the same time it faces a rare competitive threat. Investors responded by sending eBay shares lower by more t...

One day you are hot, the next you're not. Such is the music business. A day after the International Federation of Phonographic Industries released data demonstrating that the market for digital music is becoming mainstream, another international study reveals consumer dissatisfaction with the channe...

In a brewing battle of online auctioneers, discount e-tailer Overstock.com is taking full advantage of eBay's new, higher pricing. Just days after eBay announced a 60 percent price increase that enraged its Store subscribers, Overstock has reduced its listing fees 52 percent. Analysts said eBay coul...

The market for digital music downloads is becoming mainstream, according to a report issued today by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI), which showed paid downloads increasing more than tenfold in 2004. Analysts said the popularity of downloading music from the Internet h...

The Internet highway is just a free medium, like the roads and all the highways. Somehow there are those who walk on the roads and those who run, some drive taxis, others drive Ferraris or race tractor-trailers. To each his own, they are all free, and so are the maps. Thank heaven. This brings us to...