Articles by Robert Conlin

Domain registrar Register.com unveiled a new service for corporate clients Tuesday that it says will help prevent cyber-squatting, the practice of registering a domain name in a effort to hold it hostage from the holder of an established trademark The company said its Corporate Services Division will monitor more than 260 top-level domains for its ...

ABN Amro, the Netherlands' largest bank, announced today that it has moved into the China and Hong Kong markets by taking a 40 percent equity stake in the B2B e-commerce unit of General Electric In its first pure e-commerce venture in Asia, ABN Amro's Asian investment unit took a position in GE EXCpress (HK) Ltd., which was established with a Taiwa...

Online brokers Charles Schwab, Ameritrade (Nasdaq: AMTD) and TD Waterhouse (NYSE: TWE) announced today that they will join three prominent Internet venture capital firms to open an Internet-based investment bank by early next year The companies say that the yet-to-be-named bank will be based in Silicon Valley and will focus on initial public offeri...

Snap.com and Xoom.com announced today that they have signed a three-year, $75 million (US$) agreement with Healthgate Data Corp., a health and medical resource site The companies say that the deal will make HealthGate the primary anchor tenant in seven co-branded centers within Snap's Health Channel and calls for Xoom to offerco-branded e-commerce ...

In a broad three-year alliance between two leading interactive media and entertainment companies, America Online (NYSE: AOL) will invest $30 million (US$) and take an equity stake in Viacom subsidiary Blockbuster.com The deal will make Blockbuster a premier video provider on AOL's Entertainment Channel via a co-branded site that is scheduled to be ...

Internet postage provider Stamps.com announced today that it has acquired privately-held iShip.com for stock worth $300 million (US$) The agreement will combine iShip.com's Web-based multi-carrier shipping technology with Stamps.com's core Internet Postage service, providing customers with one-stop access to mailing, shipping and tracking services,...

Online auto retail referral site Autobytel.com(Nasdaq: ABTL) announced today that it has agreed to acquire A.I.N. Corporation, the owner of CarSmart.com, in a cash and stock deal valued at $31.8 million (US$) The Irvine, California-based company said that it will continue to operate the Web sites of the two auto referral retailers independently, bu...

"Name-your-price" sales pioneer priceline.com(Nasdaq: PCLN) filed suit against Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) in a Connecticut federal court today, claiming that the software giant's Expedia.com subsidiary infringed upon its patented hotel price matching service Microsoft reacted sharply to the allegations. In an interview with the E-Commerce Times, Micr...

Leading pharmacy chain CVS Corporation (NYSE: CVS) and Merck-Medco Managed Care L.L.C., one of the country's foremost providers of prescription drug care, announced today that CVS will be the exclusive provider of over-the-counter medicine and general health products for Merck-Medco's online business The agreement paves the way for Merck-Medco's 51...

Business to business e-commerce solutions provider Commerce One (Nasdaq: CMRC) announced yesterday that it has inked a deal with an Australian telecommunications company to establish a business-to-business marketplace portal for Australia and New Zealand The Walnut Creek, California-based company said the deal with Australia's Cable & Wireless Optu...

Online travel sites Travelocity.com and Preview Travel (Nasdaq: PTVL) announced a merger today that will create an e-commerce entity with more than 17 million registered members and more than $1 billion (US$) in projected 1999 sales. The companies say that the merger will create the largest e-commerce site in the travel category and the third largest e-commerce site overall...

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has continued his push to combine Internet content with state-of-the-art delivery networks by investing $1.65 billion (US$) in RCN (Nasdaq: RCNC), a Princeton, New Jersey-based telecommunications company With the investment, Allen's Vulcan Ventures has raised its stake in RCN from four to 27 percent. The transaction ...

The growing consensus among top industry leaders is that the standard e-commerce model of click and buy with no live interaction is going the way of the Commodore 64. In a word, e-commerce with a human touch is "in." "E-commerce's dirty little secret was the use of call centers to field questions from customers," said David Hsieh, founder and CEO o...

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies, a cutting-edge Internet content delivery service, announced Monday that Microsoft Corp. has made a $15 million (US$) investment in the company and will integrate its software into Akamai's expanding network According to the two companies, the goal of the strategic relationship is to help further t...

Seeking to leverage its e-commerce ties with some of America's leading sporting goods retailers, Global Sports, Inc. (Nasdaq: GSPT) announced today that it plans to launch a sporting goods auction site in the fourth quarter of 1999 The King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based company said that it will launch the auction as part of the Sports Authority.c

National Internet service providers EarthLink(Nasdaq: ELNK) and MindSpring (Nasdaq: MSPG) announced a merger today that would create the nation's second-largest ISP and "offer a clear alternative to AOL." Slated to be called EarthLink and be traded on the Nasdaq exchange as "ELNK," the new company would have a combined three million customers, a ma...

Children-oriented Web site MaMaMedia, Inc. announced today that it has raised $50 million (US$) in its most recent round of equity funding The company said that the investment was $30 million more than it had intended to raise, but that "enthusiastic response from prominent venture capital and investment management organizations, corporations and i...

Leading portal and high-speed Internet access company Excite@Home (Nasdaq: ATHM) announced Wednesday that it will create a joint venture with a German cable operator and its parent company to bring high-speed cable Internet access to 2.2 million German homes The joint venture between Excite@Home, cable operator Tele-Columbus and its parent company,...

Executives at Sony Corporation of America and Time Warner announced Wednesday that 42 year-old Scott Flanders has been chosen to lead the new publicly-traded company that will emerge from the merger of CDNow (Nasdaq: CDNW) and music marketer Columbia House Flanders will become the CEO of the new company after U.S. and Canadian regulators and CDNow ...

VacationSpot.com, an online booker of independent vacation properties, and bamboo.com, a provider of virtual tours for the real estate industry, announced today that they have formed an alliance Seattle, Washington-based VacationSpot said that it will utilize bamboo.com's 360-degree virtual tours to showcase some of the 25,000 world-wide vacation p...