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Mere days after announcing a $4.5 billion buyout effort, USA Interactive is backing away from the deal, citing sour market reaction. "It's interesting that [investors] would pan it," Morningstar.com analyst George Nichols told the E-Commerce Times. "Often, a move like this would help the stock be...

EBay and Amazon have community spirit by the truckload. And analysts and business leaders say it is no accident that the companies that make people feel like they belong at a Web site are among the most financially successful. McKinsey & Co. analyst Shona Brown told the E-Commerce Times that ...

EBay expects to rake in nearly $1 billion in revenue during 2002, CEO Meg Whitman said at the auction giant's shareholder meeting. But analysts have forecast even better numbers, predicting revenue of $1.11 billion for the year. Whitman also noted that several market opportunities still exist for...

Priceline.com has bought the domain name and trademark assets of onetime competitor Lowestfare.com, which stopped selling airline tickets a month ago. The deal is the latest in a string of partnership announcements and buyout attempts in the sector. Terms of the pact were not disclosed, although ...

Consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader has advised the U.S. government to consider curbing its technology spending with Microsoft in order to better control the software giant's "monopoly abuses." "The government is spending a lot of money trying to change the way Microsoft acts. Why wait a dec...

EBay has launched a new wireless service that will let auction aficionados bid in real-time when another user places a higher competing bid. The online auctioneer's 46 million users now can receive text message alerts on cell phones and other mobile devices that reflect the minimum bid at the tim...

Underscoring the fragility of the economic recovery in the tech sector, Internet companies slashed 2,078 jobs in May, three times as many as in April, according to a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. "We're probably going to continue to see consistent job cutting," C...

When AOL bought Time Warner at the start of 2001, the merged company's future looked bright. The air was still fresh inside the Internet bubble, the deal created a company worth a whopping $160 billion, and AOL chairman Steve Case boasted that the dynamic duo would build an unrivaled news and ent...

As expected, Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has announced that the tech giant will cut 15,000 jobs in the near future. Interpretation of the staff reductions could be mixed, IDC senior analyst Rob Rosenthal told the E-Commerce Times. "Financial analysts usually see layoffs as a sign that at le...

IBM's personal computing division has introduced several new ThinkPad notebook and NetVista desktop models, featuring Intel Pentium 4 processors and IBM e-business solutions, such as wireless networking, advanced security and application management. The new products can be taken as a sign that th...

Yahoo! has expanded and extended a strategic alliance with Travelocity and parent company Sabre Holdings that will give Travelocity exclusive billing on the portal giant's Web site. The deal calls for the portal to receive a share of revenue generated when Travelocity books air travel, car rental...

Less than a month after Napster said it would sell its assets to Bertelsmann in a deal worth $8 million, the online music swapping service has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Company executives stressed that Chapter 11 is not Napster's swan song. Instea...

The notebook war is heating up as mobile computers continue to steal market share from desktop machines. And in the latest chapter of the ongoing battle for notebook supremacy, Toshiba has toppled Dell in the worldwide market. Toshiba's global market notebook sales rose 19.3 percent in the first ...

The German government has decided to move its federal, state and local agency IT systems to Linux, citing reliability issues and a desire to reduce its dependence on Microsoft. Toward this goal, the country has signed an agreement with IBM, which will provide related hardware, software and services ...

USA Interactive has announced it will launch simultaneous buyout efforts that could give it full ownership of three major e-commerce players: Expedia.com, Ticketmaster and Hotels.com. In total, the deals could be worth $4.5 billion. USA said the takeover attempts should not be considered hostile....