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Sure, E*Trade's recent agreement to deliver streaming financial data and access to trading via Yahoo's instant messaging technology shows refreshing promise and optimism. But if instant messaging plans to graduate from electronic chitchat to e-commerce, it must close its egregious security gaps.

In the United States, Internet-based music swapping has already had its heyday. But music pirates can take comfort in knowing that if they truly need a fix, they can just pack up their portable and head to Amsterdam. Last week, a Dutch court ruled that technology firm Kazaa has the right to distr...

E-tailers may be the only businesses not betting their livelihoods on an imminent economic recovery. "E-commerce is still in a growth phase of about 5 to 10 percent per month," Forrester Research analyst Carrie Johnson told the E-Commerce Times. Still, retailers that maximize their use of multipl...

After just over a year at the helm, Microsoft president Rick Belluzzo has tendered his resignation, to the surprise of many in the industry. He reportedly decided to leave in the face of a reorganization that will give more control to leaders of Microsoft's core divisions. According to Microsoft CEO...

The search engine wars are heating up, with Google joining Yahoo! and MSN as front-runners in the race for control of this important Web sector, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings report. Although Google ranked third in terms of traffic, it powered well past the competition in terms of length of ...

The seeds of the trends now taking hold in e-commerce were planted in the industry's early days, long before the shakeout began. But only now are they starting to point the way clearly toward the future of e-commerce. One trend is a growing legion of niche firms operating on shoestring budgets...

The latest shot in the privacy regulation war has been fired. It turns out that companies are collecting less data about shoppers than they used to, at least according to one group that opposes new privacy laws. But companies aren't paring down their data gathering because they're nice people. Or...

Just days after acknowledging that its existing Web hosting capabilities leave it vulnerable to outages, auction giant eBay has tapped a division of tech titan Intel to provide additional hosting services. "By the nature of the business, keeping its site up and running 24/7 is more important to e...

By year's end, more than 600 million people worldwide will have Internet access and collectively will spend more than $1 trillion online, according to research firm IDC. Experts said regional e-commerce reach seems to correlate closely with affluence and education, although first-world status by ...

As e-commerce and security companies continue to search for the answer to consumers' privacy concerns, Visa has announced that retail giant Wal-Mart's Web arm has signed up to use Visa's password-protection program. Although additional passwords have not been beloved by consumers in the past, For...

Size matters a lot in the world of brick-and-mortar commerce. But online commerce in many ways is a great equalizer, and experts say small players can stay in the game -- and score some niche victories -- by using the same tools and strategies available to entrenched combatants. "Make sure you ha...

E-commerce services provider Digital River said it has completed its acquisition of assets and customer contracts related to Beyond.com's eStores business. The company said it expects the Beyond.com purchase will be neutral to its earnings in the first quarter of 2002, and will contribute to earn...

E*Trade has announced it will partner with Yahoo! to provide its customers with streaming financial data and access to trading through Yahoo's instant messaging technology. The deal is one of the first to target instant messaging as a new e-commerce channel. E*Trade and Yahoo! noted that Yahoo! M...

As the April 15th filing deadline approaches, consumers are flocking to tax sites. But according to Jupiter Media Metrix, most visitors are doing research rather than filing online. Forrester analyst Jaime Punishill said the online tax market grew 400 percent in 2000 and 140 percent in 2001, but ...

Dot-com job cuts more than doubled in March compared with February, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. A total of 1,549 job cuts were announced during the month. Still, the damage was far less severe than a year ago, when more than 9,500 cuts were made in March. The ...