Beth Cox

Internet grocery company Webvan Group Inc., which just yesterday said it expects a smaller than expected fourth quarter loss, teamed up with Telocity Inc. to launch a promotion that offers customers several months of free high-speed Net access. Webvan.com customers who sign up with Telocity via the promotion will get two free months of high-speed […]

What happens when you fire so many employees you don’t have enough folks left to answer the phone? If you are struggling like eToys , you set up a recorded message to handle all those pesky calls from your creditors. The online toy company, which is shutting down its European operation and laying off 700 […]

Internet grocery company Webvan Group Inc. said it expects a slightly smaller fourth quarter loss than expected, thanks to synergy realized from its September acquisition of rival HomeGrocer.com. The company, whose stock has been trading for less than $1 a share, said that preliminary estimates for the fourth quarter of 2000 indicate a pro forma […]

Online loan marketplace LendingTree Inc. said it expects to reach the break-even point by the first quarter of 2002, five months earlier than expected. The company also said that during November 2000, for the first time in its history, revenue per customer exceeded the cost of acquisition per customer. The company’s stock was up nearly […]

Analysts in both the United States and Korea were reacting favorably today to eBay’s plan to spend about $120 million for a majority stake in Internet Auction Co. Ltd., Korea’s largest auction-style Web site Goldman, Sachs analysts said that they “view the acquisition favorably as it extends eBay’s platform to the sixth largest global Internet […]

It may be tough to make money doing e-commerce at retail in these troubled times, but it’s not for lack of traffic. In fact, an estimated 34 million unique visitors on average went to retail sites each week during the 2000 holiday shopping season, according to newly released figures. Web measurement firm Media Metrix said […]

Internet auction giant eBay said it has restored service after a sequence of events starting with a hardware failure that took the site off-line for almost 11 hours yesterday. The company said that the failure, which lasted until 10 p.m. PST, “was the result of a series of failures that affected both our primary and […]

Barnes & Noble.com, which only last August opened an online bookstore that implements the Microsoft Reader technology, said today it will launch Barnes & Noble Digital, an electronic publishing imprint. The move will take the bookseller into a new role as book publisher by creating a direct link between authors and their readers, the company […]

Vastly troubled pure play Internet retailer eToys is shutting down its UK-based European operation, effective Jan. 19. A notice on the European site says: “Can we fix it? No we can’t! Sadly, eToys packs up its toy chest on January 19th, but to thank you … we’re offering 50% off the original price of all […]

Amazon.com , partnered with Toys R Us, won the 2000 holiday race among e-tailers, garnering a total of 123 million shopping visits for the season., according to a new report. However, click and mortar retailers overall did very well with Web consumers, as 11 or the top 15 e-tailers belonged to that category, according to […]

Many online consumers shopped early if not often as visitor traffic to e-commerce sites began to wind down in the week before Christmas, according to figures from Web measurement firm Media Metrix. In fact, about 31.8 million unique visitors went to online retail sites during the week before Christmas (ending Dec. 24), a decrease of […]

Troubled Stamps.com issued a terse statement today saying that its former chief executive officer, John Payne, who had remained with the company as a director, has resigned from the board. The online postage company said Payne is also resigning his position on the board of directors of EncrypTix Inc., a majority-owned subsidiary of Stamps.com. The […]