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Just a day after Amazon.com halved its purchase threshold for free shipping from $99 to $49, e-tailer Buy.com has gone one step further, announcing it will offer free shipping with no minimum purchase. Buy.com founder and CEO Scott Blum made no attempt to hide the fact that the move was a direct com...

Earlier this spring, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said he did not foresee economic improvement during the next three months. He was not kidding. Oracle reported revenue of $9.7 billion for its fiscal year ended May 31st, down considerably from the $10.9 billion recorded last year. In the company's fi...

If Amazon.com were not such a class act, if it were not the undisputed e-tail champion, the company's Gold Box promotion would be a joke. After all, it is incredibly obvious that Amazon is desperately trying to get people to buy items from certain categories -- especially those pesky kitchen acces...

In an effort to fight off a recent surge of Intel-based servers running Windows and Linux, Sun Microsystems introduced its long-awaited four-processor "Cherrystone" server. The new machine is a junior model of the V880, an eight-processor server that the company introduced last October to target mac...

Amazon.com has announced it will lower the threshold for free shipping to $49 in a move that the company has called a long-term test to raise the stakes for itself and other online retailers. Amazon said a trial of the service will run for three to six months. "It's a bit of a risk, but Jeff Bezo...

While scientists have been reaping the benefits of clustered computing for several years, using it to search for intelligent life in the universe and sift through vast amounts of data, business users have largely ignored this technology -- until recently. "In the context of e-business, there is p...

Shopping carts have become standard for online vendors. But software developers -- particularly those that make some of the larger off-the-shelf e-commerce packages -- are upping the ante by integrating additional features into their products. The best carts now provide uninterrupted interaction ...

In an effort to attract users from the small business arena, eBay has forged a deal with office outsourcer Regus to help businesses find and rent equipped offices. The new service is part of eBay Real Estate, an online marketplace for real estate-related properties and services. Morningstar analy...

Loudcloud, the closely watched follow-up effort of Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, announced it will sell its core managed services and hosting business to tech giant EDS for $63.5 million in cash. "We said all along we wanted to be the EDS of the Internet, and now it turns out EDS will be th...

The Internet economy is entering maturity, but not in the stock market or even in research and development labs. The dot-com sector is coming of age in a courtroom. "You can't underestimate the distraction factor," Giga Information Group analyst Laura DiDio told the E-Commerce Times. "When execut...

Increased productivity, made possible by new technology, has been responsible for many of the record-setting job cuts of recent years, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. CGC said its survey of U.S. corporations found that the most productive industries top its list of co...

In a preemptive strike against hackers, Microsoft has posted advisories on TechNet about newly discovered security vulnerabilities in the company's SQL Server software and three of its operating systems. "I think the main problem with Microsoft, and with them trying to protect Windows, is that it...

Recently, Apple announced a new advertising strategy to lure consumers away from Windows. But the company is taking a more low-key approach to targeting corporate users, hoping that its Xserve technology speaks for itself. "We think we're going to have the best system ... but we want to make sure...

In an attempt to thwart piracy -- and to find an online music strategy that works -- Sony Music and Universal Music have announced they plan to make downloading music from the Web less expensive. But with listeners accustomed to getting music free, pay-as-you-play services face an uncertain futur...

An economic downturn means fewer dollars for salaries, business resources and, in some cases, research and development. But is a poor economy synonymous with a dip in technical innovation, particularly at bellwether companies like Cisco and IBM? "Most companies are looking to streamline processes...