Articles by Keith Regan

America Online (NYSE: AOL) said Wednesday that its earnings for the first quarter nearly doubled from a year ago, beating analysts estimates and putting the bellwether firm in a position to help repair the recent damage on Wall Street AOL managed to report record revenue in many segments, including an 80 percent increase in the advertising and e-co...

Many an e-commerce company has spent untold amounts of time and money making sure their Web sites nail down marquee spots on the results pages of various search engines Consultants have even developed a mini-industry by promising to get companies better placement and by piggybacking small fries onto more popular sites by way of well-placed keywords...

Dominant online auction site eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) is talking with the major U.S. television networks about creating a show featuring the site's products and the people who put them up for auction, according to published reports eBay has confirmed that it is in talks with the networks, with ABC reportedly a frontrunner in the negotiations. Earlier th...

According to a report released Monday by research firm Gartner, high-speed Internet and network connections will spur the average American family to spend 20 times as much money online within six years as they do presently Gartner said that by 2006, one in four American households will spend $10,000 (US$) per year online and that nearly three-fourt...

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) and the Walt Disney Internet Group (NYSE: DIG) launched a co-branded auction site Monday called Disney Auctions, as part of an agreement between the two companies that will see the mammoth auction site offer ESPN and ABC merchandise in the future The Disney site will feature memorabilia and new products from its theme parks, tel...

I used to be one of Amazon.com's staunchest supporters, standing firmly behind the Internet bellwether come what may But no more. Amazon has flung its virtual doors wide open not only to customers, but also to all products under the sun. And it's a foolhardy strategy, one that waters down the Amazon brand name and makes turning that proverbial corn...

It's natural to shrug off the two straight months of slow e-tail growth as the lull before the holiday rush. It's natural as well to believe that once snow starts to fall and Christmas carols fill the air, everything will be all right Basically, it's natural to delude ourselves.

Several high-tech companies, including WebMD, Motorola (Nasdaq: MOT), Stamps.com (Nasdaq: STMP) and Compaq Computer (Nasdaq: CPQ), saw changes at the top of the executive ladder on Thursday amid a barrage of resignations and retirements Jeff Arnold, WebMD's 30 year-old founder, announced his resignation just hours before the company met with financ...

Despite turbulence in the computer chip sector on the whole, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD), the number-two manufacturer behind Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), reported better-than-expected earnings late Wednesday Sunnyvale, California-based AMD said it earned $219 million (US$) or 64 cents per share for the third quarter, beating Wall Street...

U.S. shoppers will spend $12.5 billion (US$) online during the last two months of the year, more than double last year's holiday spending, a report released Thursday by the NPD Group predicted The estimate from the NPD Online e-Visory report could provide a needed dose of optimism for the e-tail sector, which is staggering after a week of high-prof...

There are people who think that the failure of WebHouse says more about the company itself, and how it spent cash, than the online market for discounts on groceries and gasoline Those people are wrong. Yes, WebHouse attracted its share of discount-seekers during its brief run. And maybe, as the company suggested when it announced its demise, small-...

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Sony Music Europe said Wednesday they will partner to form a Web-based music video channel for European music fans The partnership calls for videos by Sony artists to be streamed across the Internet using Microsoft's Windows Media software. The service, to be made available through the Redmond, Washington software giant...

There they were up on Capitol Hill, doing their best impression of people who don't mind the onerous privacy regulations that are almost undoubtedly about to be forced upon them. America Online was there to speak to a Senate hearing. Hewlett-Packard too Clearly, those two organizations represent a wide range of e-commerce companies that have realiz...

Sales of computer chips will remain strong for two more years, extending one of the longest and strongest runs for the highly cyclical industry, according to a new report from Gartner division Dataquest The report says the rising importance of chips in the next generation of hardware and software platforms that power the Internet will drive the sem...

Six months after it became one of the earliest and most striking examples of the dot-com shakeout, fashion retailer Boo.com is poised to begin its second online life New York City-based Fashionmall.com (Nasdaq: FASH), the new owners of the Boo.com site -- which burned through $120 million (US$) in just over a year as a startup in the UK -- said Thu...

Imagine: A venture capitalist arrives at work one day and sets down his Starbucks mug next to a stack of business plans that tower over his inbox. As he begins sorting through them, out flutters an envelope containing a check The VC leans back in his chair and reads the handwritten note accompanying the check. "Sorry, sir, that we couldn't return a...

The National Research Council released a report Wednesday recommending that the U.S. regulate the Web carefully but sparsely, that a flat tax be levied on e-commerce and that low-income families receive vouchers to help them get connected The scientific panel, which serves as an informal advisor to the U.S. Congress, said that while the Internet is...

All at once, it seems that the promise China held for e-commerce has gone up in smoke. Without warning, the Chinese government has published a sweeping set of Internet regulations that do everything short of mounting a giant "Keep Out" sign on the nation's Web infrastructure The regulations, which appeared this week in China's official newspapers, ...

According to official lists updated Tuesday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it has received more than 200 suggestions for new top level domains (TLDs) to join such traditional suffixes as ."com" and ".org." Among the suggestions made by 47 applicants who have applied to create and operate the new domains -- whi...

Consumers are leery of online alternatives to traditional banking and will require an extra push from financial institutions to take their business online, according to a report released Tuesday by Deloitte Consulting The study of consumer habits in 10 countries found that two-thirds of consumers do not consider online services important and that a...