Articles by Rob Conlin

The proposed $143 billion (US$) merger of Time Warner, Inc. (NYSE: TW) and America Online (NYSE: AOL) is in jeopardy of being vetoed by the European Commission unless the two companies make significant concessions, the commission said Monday Specifically, the two giants will have to surrender some control over the sale of online music if the compan...

Lawyers for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are drawing up a list of concessions it wants executives from America Online (NYSE: AOL) and Time Warner (NYSE: TW) to agree to before it will approve their proposed $147 billion (US$) merger, according to published reports Tuesday The FTC is reportedly weighing a number of concessions, including ...

Online auction houses have taken the dubious honor of generating the most fraud cases on the Internet, according to a survey taken by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) The Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), a joint undertaking of the FBI and the Department of Justice, said Tuesday that it has received 1,000 complaints per week sin...

In a ruling handed down Wednesday, a federal judge reduced the potential damages that Internet music download site MP3.com (Nasdaq: MPPP) will have to pay the recording industry, saying that any damages will be assessed per CD infringed, rather than per song There are generally 12 to 13 songs on a CD, and MP3.com has over 80,000 CDs available on it...

In separate industry forums being held in Beijing and Seoul this week, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung offered optimistic assessments of the ability of the Internet and e-commerce to change their countries' futures While President Kim's remarks about the need for Asian cooperation to strengthen e-commerce in th...

While Europe is widely believed to have a vast lead over the United States when it comes to wireless e-commerce, or "m-commerce," new data from market analysis firm Datamonitor suggests that the gap is closing rapidly In a report titled "mCommerce Infrastructure in the U.S.," the company predicts that the market for wireless e-commerce solutions in...

Internet audio and video software company RealNetworks (Nasdaq: RNWK) unveiled a new subscription service Tuesday that will deliver video and software updates monthly The subscription will deliver Internet games, movie trailers and news documentary footage that will change monthly. It is viewed as a bid by RealNetworks to stave off challenges by so...

E-commerce sales in Canada accounted for only 0.2 percent of total private sector sales last year, a report issued Thursday by Statistics Canada found The report said that the U.S., with a population approximately nine times that of Canada, spent nearly 13 times as much online in just the fourth quarter of 1999 as Canada did the entire year.

UK-based online auctioneer QXL (Nasdaq: QXLC) cast serious doubt Thursday over whether its proposed $942 million (US$) merger with German online auction house Ricardo.de will go forward as planned The company issued a terse statement saying it has "received certain information from Ricardo.de in the period following the announcement of the proposed...

In an effort to expand its e-commerce presence away from home, U.S.-based retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. announced Wednesday that it has partnered with AOL Europe and UK-based comparison shopping site ShopSmart.com Under the terms of the deal, Wal-Mart Europe is merging its UK-based comparison-shopping site, Valuemad, with ShopSmart. The retail...

Software giant Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) launched its Microsoft Reader software for PCs Tuesday, significantly expanding the audience for electronic publications The company first released the reader, pre-loaded in its handheld Pocket PCs, in March. The release to a wider PC audience comes after the company inked contracts with Barnesandnoble.com an...

Name-your-price Internet service Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN) announced Tuesday that it will make use of a large chunk of a $190 million (US$) purchase of its stock by two influential industry leaders to finance the expansion of WebHouse Club, the privately-held grocery and gasoline Internet service Company vice-chairman and founder Jay Walker said...

Fending off challenges from technology rivals, software giant Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced Monday that it has been selected to provide technology and hosting services to AeroXchange, a business-to-business (B2B) marketplace for a consortium of global airlines According to published reports, the deal was worth an estimated $100 million (US$) to O...

Women's online network iVillage (Nasdaq: IVIL) ended months of speculation with the announcement that it is selling its iBaby e-commerce business to online rival Babygear.com, and closing two of its other e-commerce sites, iMaternity.com and PlusBoutique.com Turning away from e-commerce is another milestone in a difficult year for iVillage. The com...

Multilingual Web sites are no longer an exotic luxury, but instead are a critical imperative in a rapidly shifting e-commerce world, according to a new report from Internet research firm Forrester Research (Nasdaq: FORR) The report, entitled "The Multilingual Site Blueprint," said that 63 of the Fortune 100 Web sites are currently available in Engl...

Bracing for massive e-commerce growth, Chinese government officials are preparing a regulatory framework to govern the industry and lay out guidelines on taxation, advertising, content, and other key areas According to published reports, a senior Chinese Information Ministry figure said this week that officials are currently drawing up rules govern...

Beating such rivals as Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com to the market, German media giant Bertelsmann AG announced Tuesday the opening of an online bookstore in Japan, the fourteenth opening for BOL.com, Bertelsmann's Internet unit With the Japanese store, BOL.com is continuing its ambitious push to open Internet bookstores across the globe after ...

A survey released Monday by investment firm Scudder Kemper Investments shows that despite slumping share prices, a majority of Americans remain optimistic about investing in e-commerce companies and see these firms as the linchpins of the future American economy Optimism aside, however, Americans are still fearful of instability in the sector and a...

Shares of e-commerce giant Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) took a nosedive in early trading Friday, dropping as much as 19 percent on fears that the company may run out of cash and face sharper competition in the upcoming holiday season Amazon's shares closed Friday at $33.78 (US$), reaching a new 52-week low. The plunge is the third largest one-day drop...

Giant automaker DaimlerChrysler is preparing to launch a new Internet unit to handle the company's consumer and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce initiatives, according to published reports in Germany DaimlerChrysler, one of the world's largest automakers and the third largest in the United States, reportedly will group its Internet activities ...