Articles by Keith Regan

Amazon.com confirmed Wednesdaythat it will begin charging book publishers for having their titles appear in e-mail promotions sent to the e-tail giant's customers Word of the new fees was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, whichquoted publishers as saying the fees would start at US$10,000 for the rightto have a book considered for review an...

Somewhere out there, I'm sure, is a corner of cyberspace that has not been touched, or dare I say tainted, by Amazon.com. But if such a place exists, Jeff Bezos will find it soon The latest intrusion of Amazonia is in the world of micro-payments -- which is exactly what the Internet needs to make it a much more inhospitable, much less fun and much ...

Online retailer eToys, Inc. (Nasdaq: ETYS) said Monday it will lay off its remaining employees and wind down operations by the beginning of April, effectively closing the door on the company's chance of survival Although eToys continues to work with Goldman Sachs to explore its options, with a sliver of a possibility that the company could be saved...

Writer Ken Auletta's new book about the Microsoft trial bears theintriguing title of "World War 3.0." If the Microsoft case is a war, the two main opposition generals have left the battlefield and joined the Bertelsmann AG and Napster camp. What does that mean? Simple. It means get ready for World War 4.0....

In what is essentially a response to rapid consolidation in the online car-buying sector, General Motors (NYSE: GM) told its dealers Sunday thatthey will have the option of selling other car brands through a new online sales operation, AutoCentric While GM has yet to publicly unveil AutoCentric to the public, the company has told the U.S. Securitie...

With pressure building from union organizers and with a potential public relations blunder at hand, Amazon.com told laid-off hourly employees Thursday that they would not have to pledge to keep quiet about the company in order to receive a better severance deal. The change of policy was announced to workers in an e-mail Thursday....

CarsDirect.com said Wednesdaythat it will buy Greenlight.com, an online car site backed by Amazon.com The sale, which will reportedly result in about 75 job cuts beforethe merger is complete, is the latest sign of consolidation within theonline auto sales sector, which has had trouble gaining traction withconsumers.

Thanks to William Shakespeare, we know what's in a name. But what's in a number? For e-commerce, plenty. There's expectation, and if the escalating prediction game doesn't stop soon, extreme disappointment....

News that Amazon.com is slashing 1,300 jobs continued to rattle the e-commerce world Wednesday, as analysts said reduced sales forecasts from the bellwether company are a signal that the era of spectacular growth may have ended for the e-tail sector Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos and other executives blamed a coolingU.S. economy for the ...

Questions about the health of e-commerce led to a slowdown in venture investments during the fourth quarter of 2000, but venture capitalists still set a new funding record in 2000, according to a report released Monday by the National Venture Capital Association and Venture Economics. In its latest quarterly report, the trade group said investors ...

I've heard it from all sides. E-tail customers have told me it's nohardship -- indeed, no big deal -- when their favorite site goes down I've heard it from the businesses themselves -- what else would theysay -- that the outage was only temporary, that there would be no impact on financial results, that they're working hard to prevent future occurr...

Here's a neat party trick. Make a list of the profitable or nearlyprofitable e-commerce companies you know about. Then circle all the e-tailcompanies -- the ones that sell goods directly to consumers If your list is anything like mine, there is a distinct lack ofcircles. No circles, no large e-tailers in the black.

The white knight who pulled European e-tailer Letsbuyit.com from the brink of bankruptcy at the last minute this week is a convicted hacker turned venture capitalist, a UK newspaper reported Thursday The Manchester Guardian reported that a German venture fund that supplied US$2.3 million to Letsbuyit.com this week is led by Kim Schmitz, 27, who was...

Webvan Group (Nasdaq: WBVN) said Thursday that it will "dramatically reduce overhead costs" in order to conserve its cash reserves and avoid the need to return to the capital markets before the end of 2001 Webvan was up 30 U.S. cents to 84 cents in early morning trading, a 54.3 percent gain. However, analyst David Kathman of Morningstar.com told th...

The people at DoubleClick can breathe a bit easier now. With the U.S. Federal Trade Commission laying off after investigating their privacy practices for the past 11 months, the folks at DoubleClick must feel like an elephant just stepped off their chest. But the pressure hasn't gone away entirely. The infinitely complex and tangled privacy debat...

While still years from unveiling its next-generation game console, Sony apparently plans to make PlayStation 3 a gateway to the Internet and a means to leverage the company's far-flung entertainment holdings. Company executives have already begun to talk up the PS3 upgrades, though the product is not expected to hit the United States until 2004 --...

Fresh off an impressive earnings report and a significant court victory, eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) said Monday it would expand its live auctions feature to give users access to items being sold at auction houses around the world. However, on the same day as the expansion announcement, the online auction house suffered its latest service outage -- one th...

Internet companies can, in theory, locate anywhere that telephone and power lines reach. So why did so many consolidate in Silicon Valley? Unfortunately, trend-following played a role -- too big of a role -- and now it's time to pay the piper, who also happens to be the local utility....

It turns out that I was instrumental in developing the World Wide Web. I didn't know this until the Administration of outgoing U.S. President Bill Clinton took credit for the explosion in Internet use and e-commerce By their standard, if you are around when something good takes place, you're at least partly responsible. So, because I was alive and...

In the most obvious sign yet that struggling e-tailer eToys (Nasdaq: ETYS) is facing an immediate cash crisis, the company acknowledged Thursday that it had missed some payments to a temporary staffing agency. eToys confirmed the missed payments after the temporary staffing agency said it would write off US$2 million worth of billings that eToys h...