E-Commerce

In a move to distinguish itself from its successful travel properties in an increasingly competitive landscape, IAC/InterActiveCorp. will spin off Expedia and its other related travel Web sites next year as a separate publicly traded company, company officials said. "We believe greater value can be ...

Taking a stab at being near the forefront of the mobile commerce and streaming music movements, Sprint today launched Music Choice, a mobile music service that gives users of its multimedia phones access to a catalog of digital music feeds. The service, the first streaming music service available fo...

Recent activity in the business process management (BPM) space signals a coming of age for an application that until recently was the focus of pure-play BPM providers. So says Chuck Ames, president and CEO of Oak Grove Systems, a BPM software company based in Calabasas, California. JBoss' recent jBP...

EBay has expressed "outrage" over the arrest of the chief executive of its operations in India because a user of its shopping and auction portal, Baazee.com, listed a controversial pornographic video clip. EBay said in a statement that it was "outraged" that Avnish Bajaj, an Indian-born U.S. citizen...

It's that time of year again. Shoppers go into a frenzy trying to juggle all the other chores in their life and yet get gifts for everyone on their list -- especially that last minute gift for Aunt Tilly! But years after its inception, online shopping remains a challenge for retailers and Web users ...

Move over all you unsolicited ads for Vicodin and Viagra. Make way senders of ads for phony Rolex watches and new mortgages. You are about to share in-box space with something much more ethereal. Spiritual spam is on the rise. Managed e-mail and Internet security firm MessageLabs has spotted an emer...

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced that its member companies filed a new wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against 754 individual file-sharers. A share of this wave of lawsuits filed Wednesday was brought against users of university computer networks. Twenty ind...

The recent wave of mergers crashed into the e-commerce space today when auction giant eBay said it would acquire Rent.com for US$415 million in cash and stock. The purchase extends eBay's already sprawling reach into the rental real estate industry. Rent.com lists apartments and homes for rent, rely...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is slated to begin levying a new tax on domain name registrations starting early in 2005 and has already begun to make plans for how to spend what could be a sizeable windfall. The fee, which amounts to 75 cents per year for each domain...

After a two-day presentation in court, a federal judge has ruled in favor of Google in a trademark infringement case filed by insurer GEICO. That frees Google to display rival logos when users search under the keyword GEICO. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia sai...

Yahoo has launched a service to provide live local traffic information with its online maps and driving directions, something it said makes it the first Web site to provide speed conditions and dynamic traffic information nationwide. The new feature will initially be integrated in Yahoo Search, Yaho...

Melodeo and Warner Music Group today announced they have signed an agreement to allow consumers to securely download entire tracks from WMG's music catalog directly to their mobile phones. Melodeo, a Seattle-based company, provides music to wireless subscribers through a mobile-music solution instal...

The second week of the prime holiday shopping season accounted for US$2.2 billion of online purchases, with the number of transactions up 21 percent over the same week last year, according to VeriSign's latest e-commerce data. Monday, December 6, was the peak day of the week, accounting for 5.4 mill...

The Internet's governing body has cleared the way for two new top-level domains, one of which is designed to make it easier for users to find information on mobile devices and a second that would be set aside for job postings. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it w...

While there are still a few days left in the holiday shopping season, all signs point to merry profits for portals. In the effort to catch that cash, this year has seen some eye-catching promotions from old favorites and some new players with promising propositions. It's all about the customer's sho...