Beth Cox

Moving to marry off-line promotions to its online e-commerce endeavors, Barry Diller’s USA Interactive is acquiring privately held coupon book publisher Entertainment Publications Inc. in a $370 million cash and stock deal. Troy, Mich.-based Entertainment Publications serves more than 160 markets and does business with about 70,000 local merchants and national retailers. USA Interactive , […]

The beat goes on in the music business as Universal Music Group, in a nod to the inevitable, said it would make 43,000 music tracks available for consumers to download via a variety of retail outlets and music Web sites. The move follows a somewhat similar recent decision by EMI Recorded Music, and it’s clear […]

Of an estimated 1,500 B2B exchanges operating in 2000, only about 200 will survive through 2003 if the current shakeout trend continues, according to a new research study. The study, entitled “Shakeouts in Digital Markets: Lessons from B2B Exchanges,” tracks what it calls the “amazingly compressed boom-to-bust cycle” for Internet startups in B2B markets. The […]

The volume has been cranked up in the Internet music space recently and some of the action is even being taken into the real world as Loudeye inked a deal with Fullplay Media Systems to let bricks-and-mortar merchants offer in-store sampling of 3 million songs from more than 250,000 CDs. Elsewhere, Pressplay and MusicNet both […]

Taking a shot across Amazon.com’s bows, eBay launched what it calls a new “electronics superstore site” for both consumers and IT buyers, and introduced free shipping on many items, a first for the auction giant. The San Jose, Calif.-based company said it is offering access to “millions of products” at ebayelectronics.com, including consumer electronics, computers, […]

A government-appointed commission set up to look into the wave of change sweeping through the travel business issued its report at long last, and both the travel agents and airline-backed online ticket sales operation Orbitz hailed the results. In short, the commission, in its own words, concluded that “consumers have benefited greatly from changes in […]

Making good on its new “Right for My Business” strategy, tax and financial software company Intuit cut its fiscal first quarter loss and raised its outlook while rolling out a line-up of new QuickBooks products for 2003. The company also launched new software developer kits for some of its products in a move aimed at […]

The government’s decision not to regulate online sales of airline tickets is either a great victory for capitalism and the Internet, or a move that may hurt the consumer and decimate the traditional travel agency business in a bid to help the nation’s ailing airlines. The U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing revisions to the […]

The concept of watching movies on your computer has been around for a while, and finally the big Hollywood studios are making a play for this nascent market, launching an online movie rental service called Movielink. The megabucks question for the studio moguls, however, is not so much whether the technology and broadband connections are […]

Online retail giant Amazon says it is geared up for the holidays and the mantra once again will be “fulfill, fulfill, fulfill.” Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, said at a conference with financial analysts that productivity increases on the part of its labor force will mean that the […]

E-commerce payments and credit card processor First Data , which is engaged in a legal brawl with Visa International over the processing of transactions, filed a countersuit accusing Visa of “anti-competitive and monopolistic practices.” The suit follows on the heels of legal action taken by Visa last April attempting to block the expansion of credit […]

Name-your-price travel service Priceline.com, citing continuing difficulties with the air travel business and “impairment” of investments in offshore licensees, posted a somewhat surprising third quarter loss of $24.3 million, or 11 cents per share, and said it will lay off about 65 employees. Norwalk, Conn.-based Priceline said its results include non-cash charges of $24.2 million […]