Articles by Keith Regan

State lawmakers in Nevada approved a bill Monday that could make the Silver State the first in the U.S. to legalize Internet gambling. The Nevada Senate vote of 17 to 4 gave the needed two-thirds approval to Bill No. 466. The bill now moves to Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn for his approval....

In addressing the issue of Internet privacy and the handling of data collected in e-commerce transactions, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seems to be employing that old adage: No harm, no foul. If only it were that simple. Instead, by letting Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and its subsidiary Alexa off the hook, while acknowledging that the two...

In a boost to the fledgling electronic books industry, the National Book Foundation said Friday it would consider e-books for its prestigious National Book Awards this year for the first time. The National Book Awards, which carry a US$10,000 prize in four categories, are widely considered one of the two highest honors for a single book in the Uni...

The launch of Orbitz is drawing near. And the travel industry, both offline and on the Web, would have us believe that the approaching footsteps it hears are those of a monster, a Godzilla coming to stomp Tokyo into submission. But is it really a monster? It seems to me that only a fraction of the fear being expressed about Orbitz has much basis i...

Web portal Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) said Thursday that its decision to charge listing fees for auctions on its site has resulted in a higher percentage of auction items being sold and a higher sales price for each item. Over the past five months, the percentage of items sold has risen to 31 percent for all auctions, 51 percent for featured auctions a...

Job search Web site Monster.com said Wednesday that it is buying competitor FlipDog.com for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of privately held FlipDog will combine two of the Web's top career sites in terms of the number of job postings and the volume of Internet traffic. It also continues a buying spree by Maynard, Massachusetts-based Monster ...

Job search Web site Monster.com said Wednesday that it is buying competitor FlipDog.com for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of privately held FlipDog will combine two of the Web's top career sites in terms of the number of job postings and the volume of Internet traffic. It also continues a buying spree by Maynard, Massachusetts-based Monster ...

Job search Web site Monster.com said Wednesday that it is buying competitor FlipDog.com for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of privately held FlipDog will combine two of the Web's top career sites in terms of the number of job postings and the volume of Internet traffic. It also continues a buying spree by Maynard, Massachusetts-based Monster ...

No one has ever accused Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) of being an e-tail slacker. Something's always brewing in Seattle, Washington, with Amazon forever busy striking alliances and announcing new products. But the best business decision that Amazon has made in a while is the one to pull back the reins on Amazon Anywhere, at least for the time being.

Not content to rest on its laurels as one of the true e-commerce success stories, auction giant eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) plans to launch a storefronts program in coming months, chief executive officer Meg Whitman told investors Friday. Whitman also told shareholders at eBay's annual meeting in San Jose, California that eBay plans to merge Half.com, the...

Is e-commerce finally and unquestionably here to stay? With rejuvenated stocks, high-profile strategic alliances, television advertisements, and an overall sense of acceptance from consumers and the business community, the arrows point in that direction. By small steps and not the big, noisy leaps and bounds that marked its arrival, e-commerce has...

With the survival of the company still very much in question, Webvan (Nasdaq: WBVN) announced some good news for a change Thursday, saying that it has completed the integration into its technology and business platform of acquisitions the company made last year. Webvan said the consolidation, which included folding in the operations of HomeGrocer ...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) will add two members to its board of directors and is seeking people experienced in retail operations, chief executive officer Jeff Bezos told shareholders Wednesday. At Amazon's annual meeting in Seattle, Washington, Bezos told stockholders and reporters that the e-tailer is turning its attention to "breaking through the...

Ailing online grocer Webvan (Nasdaq: WBVN) began selling about US$2 million worth of assets Tuesday that it once hoped to use for an aggressive West Coast expansion. Webvan sold goods worth an estimated $1.3 million at an auction held Tuesday in Kent, Washington, near Seattle. Most of those items, ranging from a lobster tank to meat slicing machin...

There's an old saying about kicking a person when he or she is down, but I can't remember how it goes, so here is my take on the people who are crying over the thousands of dollars in rebates they never got from CyberRebate.com: You got exactly what you deserved. Frankly, it's beyond me how the deal ever sounded like a good one, or more to the poi...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Toys 'R' Us (NYSE: TOY) will launch the next phase of their online alliance as early as this week, when Babiesrus.com becomes part of the Amazon site. Toys 'R' Us spokesman Louis Lipschitz told the E-Commerce Times the change will definitely take place by the end of May....

The short-term outlook for online grocers has dimmed considerably, but the long-range outlook remains promising, according to a study released Monday by Jupiter Media Metrix (Nasdaq: JMXI). Jupiter said it has cut its forecast for online grocery sales for 2001 in half, from US$2 billion to $1 billion, largely due to economic factors and the impair...

Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) reached beyond retail for the first time Friday, launching a movie-listing site that will be supported by advertising. "In Theaters" will initially be supported by advertising from Buena Vista Pictures, a division of media giant Disney (NYSE: DIS), with other marketing partners invited to join.

To say that George Shaheen got a golden parachute when he dashed out the chief executive officer's door, leaving struggling home grocer Webvan (Nasdaq: WBVN) behind, would be the understatement of the year. The parachute glitters even more when compared to the company's other fortunes. More than 800 people have been laid off from the company, for ...

Three out of every four partnerships linking a brick-and-mortar retailer with an e-commerce player in the past four years has been successful, according to a study released Thursday by McKinsey & Company. In fact, McKinsey, which looked closely at 700 deals announced since 1997, found that so-called e-alliances involving online firms are more like...