Articles by James Hollander

The recent explosion in e-commerce has made it increasingly clear that a big change for brick-and-mortar retailing looms just around the corner. A new study conducted by Greenfield Online, Inc., indicates that online sales have already begun to take a bite out of offline sales, at least among Internet-savvy shoppers The big surprise, however, is th...

Traditionally, when companies announce financial results on a Friday, it is likely that they are hoping to attract as little attention as possible to their results. This Friday, iMall (Nasdaq: IMAL), released its 1998 fourth quarter financials, indicating that the e-commerce mall developer lost more than $13 million (US$) in the fiscal year. Nonetheless, the company's stock held steady as of mid-day trading, indicating a high level of confidence in iMall's future, and a standard of review not often seen in most other industries...

CDnow (Nasdaq: CDNW) and N2K (Nasdaq: NTKI) announced on Thursday the completion of the planned merger between the two companies, which they describe as resulting in the "leading global music e-commerce company as measured by customer base, revenue, positioning with key partners and product offerings." The Company will be based in New York and will be known as CDnow, Inc. Beginning March 18, 1999, its stock will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol "CDNWD" for 20 days, then it will trade as CDNW...

Database and Internet solutions heavyweight Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced on Thursday powerful third-quarter gains and key e-commerce deals. The company reported a whopping 36% increase in profits for the quarter ending February 28, 1999, and major contracts with e-commerce leaders like eBay, eToys, Excite, theglobe.com, Infoseek, NECX, and Techies.com...

Ticketmaster Online - CitySearch (Nasdaq: TMCS) announced on Friday a new service called "CitySearch Commerce," that enables small and medium-sized businesses to conduct electronic commerce. The new service augments CitySearch's existing Web site development offerings for small businesses. Similar to services offered by Yahoo!Store and GeoCities, the new CitySearch service offers basic online selling features at a low development cost...

E-commerce giants Dell Computer (Nasdaq: DELL) and Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) are linking their content and online sales strategies, starting with a new co-branded Web site infrastructure announced on Wednesday. The joint venture will be linked from Dell's and Amazon's checkout pages and, will provide consumers with a customizable interface, featuring content and product offerings from the two companies...

Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) announced on Wednesday the completion of its acquisition of Shopping.com (OTC:IBUY), an online retailer of goods and services. Compaq hopes that its ownership of Shopping.com and the AltaVista Internet portal site will usher in a new era of Internet-based sales for the PC manufacturer, which still lags behind its major competitors in the e-commerce arena. A large portion of Compaq's announcement focused on restoring consumer confidence in Shopping.com's ability to provide adequate customer service to its online shoppers...

Netscape Communications (Nasdaq: NSCP) announced on Tuesday that it will integrate comprehensive support for XML across its portfolio of e-commerce applications. According to the company, support for the XML language is a key ingredient to Netscape's e-commerce strategy. Netscape's implementation of XML will support e-commerce transactions, business processes and catalog exchanges between companies...

E-commerce hosting service iMALL, Inc. (Nasdaq:IMAL) today announced the acquisition of San Francisco based Pure Payments Inc., which provides a critical component for Internet-based credit card processing. Pure Payments offers the electronic payment "gateway" which has been used in iMALL's integrated e-commerce solution, to interface between e-commerce sites and banks, for credit card transaction settlement...

In the midst of legal wrangling with the U.S. Department of Justice and preparations for the much anticipated release of Windows 2000, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) shifted its focus on Thursday to announce a broad e-commerce strategy. At a press briefing held in San Francisco with chairman and CEO Bill Gates, the company outlined a comprehensive strategy to make it easier for businesses and consumers to conduct business over the Internet, using the Microsoft platform. Most notably, Microsoft announced a new e-commerce software protocol known as "BizTalk," which will be integrated into the upcoming Microsoft operating system and Office suite...

Bluefly, Inc. (Nasdaq SmallCap: BFLY), an Internet clothing retailer announced today that it has signed a comprehensive marketing agreement with Excite, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, Bluefly's online store will be integrated throughout Excite.com, WebCrawler.com, and the Excite co-branded channels of Netscape's Netcenter sites. The agreement includes a combination of e-commerce, advertising, and promotional programs...

Cyberian Outpost, Inc. (Nasdaq: COOL), a well-known Internet retailer of computer hardware, software and accessories through its Web site Outpost.com, reported on Tuesday that it lost $25.2 million (US$) during its fiscal year, which ended February 28, 1999. On the positive side, Cyberian's net sales were $85.2 million, up 276% from $22.7 million reported last year. Presumably, this kept the bears at bay, as the company's stock remained relatively steady as of mid-day trading...

Dell Computer Corporation (Nasdaq: DELL), one of the best known and largest direct computer systems vendors, today unveiled Gigabuys.com, a new online superstore that provides Internet shoppers with a one-stop shopping destination for the purchase of more than 30,000 computer-related products from an extensive array of vendors, other than Dell With...

The biggest threat to Microsoft these days may not be the U.S. Department of Justice, nor does it appear to be the Netscape browser. A much larger danger to Bill Gates' Windows-based empire is a new operating system, available free of charge over the Internet. The new operating system, known as Linux, was developed by Linus Torvalds and a veritable army of programmers and hackers around the world...

On the e-commerce superhighway, there are no borders. With a single click of the mouse, shoppers can easily land in online stores owned and operated by international companies across the globe. However, once an overseas consumer decides to make an online purchase, traditional issues of currency conversion and credit card settlement arise To address...