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This week, the U.S. Postal Service made it official: The cost of a first-class stamp will rise from 34 cents to 37 cents on June 30th. The rate hike will accelerate companies' moves toward electronic billing, according to GartnerG2 analyst Kenneth Kerr. However, Forrester Research analyst Ron She...

Just two days after shaking up top-level management, AOL Time Warner has named a former radio executive to head its interactive services unit, which includes online flagship America Online. The executive shuffle was spurred by investors' fears about slower growth in the online unit. However, Morn...

Good news is hard to come by lately in Silicon Valley. And even the good news -- for example, the Valley has less traffic than it did a year ago -- is built on the back of a whole lot of bad news. But sympathy from those outside the region is in short supply. The Valley is taking it on the chin b...

I shudder to think of a world without Yahoo. But the company's recent spate of new revenue-generating tactics reeks of desperation. I find myself entertaining the previously unthinkable notion that the grandfather of the Internet is mortal and could pass away. I do not blame Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel...

Much to the consternation of the technology sector, tech spending has yet to turn the corner. A new report from market analysis firm Aberdeen Group predicts worldwide tech spending will reach $1.43 trillion by 2005, up from $1.21 billion in 2001, but as Aberdeen senior vice president Hugh Bishop ...

E*Trade has announced it will pay $100 million in stock for privately held Tradescape. The move will nearly double the number of daily stock trades on E*Trade's network, making it the category leader. But GartnerG2 vice president and research director David Furlonger told the E-Commerce Times tha...

Yahoo! reported a net loss of $53.6 million in its first quarter, slightly beating analysts' expectations, and earned higher-than-expected revenue of $192.7 million. However, the company raised its projections for the second quarter. That forecast may give a much-needed boost to the Internet sect...

In the realm of e-commerce, credit cards rule. But the distant relationship between buyer and merchant, combined with the anonymity enjoyed by potential wrongdoers, makes the processing job tougher than it would be for a brick-and-mortar purchase. That is why invisible investigators and bouncers ...

More than 40 percent of all reported Internet fraud complaints stemmed from online auctions in 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a report covering complaints received during the year. But auction fraud cost an average of just $400, compared with a $5,000 average loss from a scam i...

IBM has released its first earnings warning in more than a decade, announcing that it expects first-quarter revenue and profit will fall short of analysts' estimates. The warning sent IBM's stock down 10.1 percent to $87.41 and dragged some other tech stocks down with it. But even as confidence i...

Microsoft and Oracle find themselves butting heads in a number of high-tech arenas, but the software giants have both managed to carve out a sizable presence in the e-commerce sector. But as both look to broaden their clientele, analysts said the two could clash with more frequency, battling to capt...

In one of the biggest e-commerce mergers of the year, online stock-trading site Ameritrade said it would acquire privately held competitor Datek Online Holdings for nearly US$1.3 billion in stock. "We're going to take the best of both franchises moving forward," Ameritrade CEO Joe Moglia said, ad...

Online auctioneer eBay suffered a series of Web site outages on Sunday, including a glitch in the clothing and jewelry categories lasting more than nine hours. "We understand the frustration that any system issue causes our user," eBay said, apologizing for the inconvenience the outage caused. Be...

With new threats constantly cropping up -- ranging from hacking threats to new viruses and identity thievery -- the number of security companies getting into the game also has been rising steadily. "There are so many things to look into, because there are so many areas for vulnerability," Giga In...

Ticketmaster.com is planning to launch two new features that will let users resell unused tickets and bid for tickets online, rather than waiting in line at retail outlets. The reselling feature will be sent via e-mail with a bar code, which the buyer must print and take to the stadium. Only the ...