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Which companies are the new "rising startups" of e-commerce? A new breed of online retailer is making noise by attracting cost-conscious consumers who hope to purchase overstocks at deep discounts. These resellers include such sites as SmartBargains.com, Overstock.com and MoonBuzz.com. "These sit...

In a move to spur members of its affiliate program to sell more used goods, Amazon.com has begun paying affiliate Web sites a 2.5 percent referral fee on the sale of used items. "Amazon does not have to inventory or ship these used items," Yankee Group analyst Paul Ritter told the E-Commerce Time...

Despite concerns about privacy and fraud, recent U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) figures seem to confirm that consumers have gotten in the swing of shopping online, and the e-commerce cash register seems set to ring even more often in the future. The DOC recently reported that although U.S. onl...

IBM has sliced 2,000 jobs from its Global Services unit as it struggles to bring its financials more in line with forecasts. The latest round of cuts is part of a bigger layoff scheme that IBM began implementing this spring. In total, the company is expected to divest itself of 8,000 to 9,000 emp...

While the worst of times may be over for companies in business-to-business e-commerce, the sector remains unsteady and is likely to see more consolidation and survival-oriented alliances. "I don't think the shakeout is over," Forrester research director Laurie Orlov told the E-Commerce Times, not...

IBM has announced a five-year, $194 million agreement to provide electronic payments processor TSYS with hardware, software and other services. This is the largest deal in Columbus, Georgia-based TSYS' history. Under the terms of the deal, new IBM hardware will reduce the number of TSYS servers r...

In 2001, Epinions.com faced the same choice as scores of other dot-coms: Adapt or die. While the shopping information site, founded in 1999 by former Yahoo, Excite and Netscape executives and funded by some of the best-known investors in Silicon Valley, had attracted millions of repeat users, it ...

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has taken aim at the growing amount of spam plaguing New York consumers by filing suit against online marketing company MonsterHut and two of its executives. The suit accuses the company of misrepresenting its e-mail marketing service as an opt-in offering.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) last week targeted another file-sharing service, Audiogalaxy, with its copyright protection campaign. The association filed a lawsuit against the Internet company, alleging that it encouraged users to copy and distribute copyrighted works and t...

Amazon.com is testing two new features -- catalog merchant pages and restaurant listings -- in an effort to generate additional revenue and drive more traffic to its Web site. The catalog pages encompass both consumer and professional products. The restaurant listings, being tested in Seattle, Bos...

The failure of catalog company Fingerhut is more than a blip on the radar screen. It represents a warning to those who would dive recklessly into online retail. How could Federated, the department store chain that bought Fingerhut, have thought that a small catalog retailer could provide an insta...

Sun Microsystems recently confirmed that it expects to return to profitability in the second quarter, despite a slight drop-off in orders from the previous quarter. "Sun weeded out all the old stuff that would cause the company inventory headaches," Forrester principal analyst Carl Howe told the ...

Open source technology is cheap to use, comes with few frills -- and has yet to gain the popularity enjoyed by proprietary products from giants like Microsoft. Nevertheless, many companies are taking advantage of open source software's flexibility and low cost for use in e-business operations. Bu...

A recent study found that online advertising is holding its own compared with traditional advertising revenue. And analysts expect the current steady state will give way to growth as soon as economic news improves. "The areas that we see continuing to grow in terms of share of online advertising ...

Since launching its European auction site, Yahoo! has trailed far behind eBay. Rather than simply conceding to the competition, the company found a more lucrative strategy: It teamed up with its rival. EBay and Yahoo! Europe will pool their marketing resources to advertise eBay's sites via extens...