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Despite all the bluster and hype spewed by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in the late 1990s, they could not create what they so desperately desired -- a New Economy that would replace the business cycle of expansions and contractions with constant growth. Instead, many e-tailers fell by the w...

Idealab and CMGI were among the most widely praised models of the New Economy. But they were both hit, and hit hard, by the implosion of the dot-com sector. Now, they are in the fight of their lives to survive. The questions facing these companies are big ones. Can Idealab generate enough brainstor...

The U.S. economy was not kind to offline retailers during the 2002 holiday season: They saw the smallest revenue gains in more than 30 years. But e-commerce, which tended to overpromise and underperform during the Internet bubble as many Web-only outfits stumbled over fulfillment and customer servic...

As tenures at companies go, Steve Case's trajectory at AOL was similar to that of a bullet fired straight up -- it ascends at a fast rate but eventually plummets. Last week, Case resigned his AOL chairmanship under pressure from stockholders who have lost tens of billions of dollars since the AOL Ti...

E-commerce, once the domain of "geek types" or consumers with high disposable incomes, has hit the mainstream. The U.S. Census Bureau says e-commerce spending increased by more than 34 percent year over year to $11.1 billion from the third quarter of 2001 to the same period in 2002. But the Census B...

In the wake of the dot-com collapse and subsequent recession, it is easy to shun e-commerce hype -- but to do so altogether would be short-sighted. The ideas that drove the initial boom are still valid and in fact have flourished. Customers and businesses really have forged direct connections over ...

As 2003 dawns, several signs indicate that the U.S. economy is starting to improve. With those welcome tidings in mind, some workers in the e-commerce sector may be hoping for a reprise of the late 1990s, when jobs were plentiful, stock options were actually worth something, and the general high-tec...

The speed of information delivery is continually increasing. Most people who work in office environments have had access to broadband Internet connections for years, and more home users than ever before can surf the Web at speeds that eclipse those of the fastest dial-up modems. But how many custome...

As more companies pursue ever-scarcer revenues in this slow economy, they are putting more emphasis on getting the word out about their presence. And although the Internet is not the only marketing channel a business should examine, it definitely should be part of the plan. "The Internet makes up a ...

The information technology industry is emerging from what many are calling the worst downturn in the sector's history. In an effort to weather the storm, high-tech companies have cut prices and even introduced special financing deals to help move inventory and generate revenue. But when the purse st...

The dot-com landscape is littered with the wreckage of e-commerce companies that did not survive the Internet shakeout. The bright side of this bleak reality is that those e-businesses still standing are far more likely to be profitable than their deceased brethren were. The question now is: What li...

The general malaise in the economy and in the high-tech sector in particular has been especially hard on the telecommunications industry. Recent signs, though, have pointed toward a slow but welcome recovery for high-tech, raising the question of whether the uptick will spell relief for the telecom ...

For enterprises that want to cut IT costs, one answer is to ship some high-tech work overseas, to places like India, Singapore, the Philippines and even Russia or China. "A lot of companies that haven't looked at this already are starting because it is hard to ignore -- especially in this economy --...

The weak economy and a shorter-than-usual holiday shopping season have led analysts who focus on the overall retail market to say the only foreseeable aspect of this year's holiday sales is that they will be unpredictable. The same cannot be said of forecasting online holiday sales revenue, however....

As the battle for online revenue extends into 2002's shortened holiday-shopping season, some e-commerce firms may be considering whether to post uncensored reviews of the products they sell, as Amazon does. To be sure, it is a risky proposition -- e-tailers risk losing product sales by having negati...

As the U.S. economy continues to traverse shaky ground, companies are asking more of their IT departments. The root of the problem is that many companies, large and small, have pressing IT needs that are not about to disappear -- but they also have far less capital than they once did. The question i...

Dell is not a company that rests on its laurels. It has climbed back on top of the PC sales heap just a few months after the HP-Compaq merger displaced it, and it has extended its brand name into the printer and PDA markets to help drive its bottom line. Now, other manufacturers must respond to Dell...