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Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest Internet retailer, said it will sever ties with its affiliates in California if the state enacts a new law that requires the company to collect taxes on online purchases. California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation yesterday mandating sales-tax collections by Web retailers, including Amazon, on purchases by state residents. The state’s pending budget plan counts on $200 million from the law. In an e-mail before the bill was signed, Amazon said the legislation was “unconstitutional and counterproductive.”

Alibaba Group announced a major restructuring of its key Taobao unit, splitting the popular Chinese e-commerce platform into three separate companies focused on different market segments.

Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday said that, after less than four years of selling electronic books, it's now selling more of them than printed books. The online retailer said that since April 1, it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books, including printed books for which there is no electronic edition. The comparison excludes free e-books, which would tip the scales further if they were included.

Amazon.com Inc reported that first-quarter sales rose 38.2 percent, above analysts' forecasts.

Overstock.com said it has been released from Google's "penalty box," which pushed it down in search results as a punishment for the retailer's efforts to game the search system.

EBay Inc., owner of the largest e- commerce market, agreed to buy GSI Commerce Inc. for about $2.4 billion to add interactive marketing services.

Amazon.com, apart from being a major online retailer of books, DVDs, music, games, apparel, and other merchandise, also has a small business of providing cloud and other Web services. It offers Web services like cloud computing and cloud storage service offerings, in which it competes with bigger players like Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Amazon also owns and operates websites such as Audible.com, IMDB.com, and Shelfari.com.

Shares in eBay jump almost 8% after the online auction site's Paypal unit said its revenues would double by 2013.

EBay’s chief executive said the company can now “go on the offensive” after years of losing market share.

One month after Amazon announced that its third-generation Kindle "eclipsed 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' as the bestselling product in Amazon’s history," CEO Jeff Bezos announces: "Kindle books have now overtaken paperback books as the most popular format on Amazon.com."