Beth Cox

It’s getting to be that time of year, and once again tax preparation icon H&R Block is teaming up with Microsoft in an effort to one-up the competition, especially competition from Intuit , whose TurboTax product dominates the software market for self-preparers. There are lots of other players in the online tax game, though, and […]

The latest Internet Confidence Index report finds that consumers are slightly less sanguine than a year ago, thanks to the dismal economy, but still projects that U.S. consumers will spend $14.8 billion online in the first quarter of 2003. The index, put together by portal company Yahoo! and market research firm ACNielsen, is a quarterly […]

Bellwether online auction company eBay, saying it expects to see nearly $2 billion in revenue for 2003, turned in another nice financial performance, reporting fourth quarter 2002 net income of $87 million, or 28 cents per share, on record revenues of $413.9 million. Analysts on average had been expecting about $60.4 million in revenues or […]

It was a very good holiday season indeed for DealTime.com, as the privately held online shopping search company reported record revenues of more than $11 million for the fourth quarter and said it was profitable on a GAAP basis for the second half of the year. “2002 was a major break-out year for DealTime and […]

A notorious spammer who pitches pirated software from Symantec’s Norton product line over the Internet has left vast amounts of customer data exposed for the world to see. And apparently, that is not at all uncommon. One of the Web sites operated by this particular spammer is called salesscape.com, and links related to the site […]

A new industry report says that more than 80 percent of online retailers saw revenue increases of at least 10 percent this holiday season and 31 percent saw increases of at least 50 percent. And that comes despite the relatively dismal reports about holiday sales in real-world stores. The figures are from the final installment […]

Scandal-plagued online real estate play Homestore is taking what it hopes will be a major step along the road to recovery, settling a dispute with America Online and signing a new marketing pact with AOL. Under the new 18-month agreement, Westlake Village, Calif.-based Homestore gets the exclusive right to provide AOL with its real estate […]

In a move that they claim is an industry first for firms that have both proprietary banking and brokerage businesses, E*Trade Group rolled out a real-time cash transfer technology that let its online banking customers quickly put money into their E*Trade Securities brokerage accounts. Menlo Park, Calif.-based E*Trade said the transfer mechanism, accessed via a […]

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos says the company, which aims to be the planet’s most customer-centric business, expects to see operating margins over the long term that will be in the low double-digit range. In a wide-ranging but relatively non-specific (especially on numbers) presentation at the Morgan Stanley Software, Services, Internet & Networking Conference in Scottsdale, […]

Starting off the new year with a new investment, online movie ticketing company Fandango cut right to the chase with a new $15.3 million investment from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Technology Crossover Ventures. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Fandango, which recently did a marketing deal with retail operation Buy.com and e-commerce outsourcer United Commerce Service, also said that […]

Parent company USA Interactive was shrugging it off, but Wall Street took a dim view of a Hotels.com statement saying that fourth-quarter revenues won’t meet estimates, and punished the stock by dropping its price 25 percent. Hotels.com stock was down $15.05 in early afternoon trading, to $43.99. At one point the stock was off 31 […]

Reporting what it called “a solid fourth quarter performance” and announcing some new business partnerships, Internet retailer drugstore.com said sales will come in at about $55 million for the period, up more than 26 percent from a year ago. Presenting at the Morgan Stanley Internet, Software and Networking Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bellevue, Wash.-based drugstore.com […]