E-commerce, Retail | featured news

Amazon launched its Black Friday deals store, joining its rivals who are looking to get an early start on attracting holiday shoppers.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is phasing out the sale of Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablet and Kindle e-readers, the second major retailer to stop offering the items in six months... Retailers are trying to fight a growing practice called "showrooming." That's when shoppers, armed with smartphones, browse products in physical stores and then shop online for a better price.

Online retailer Amazon.com has tried to become all things to all consumers, but in California, it is about to take on a role it has fought against for years: tax collector.

The California tax man cometh, and he's headed for the Internet. State tax collectors are preparing to crack down on renegade Internet merchants who don't collect sales taxes, and nearly 100 new state auditors, lawyers and other specialists are being hired to help over the next three years.

AMERICANS are obsessed with their scores. Credit scores, G.P.A.'s, SAT's, blood pressure and cholesterol levels -- you name it. So here's a new score to obsess about: the e-score, an online calculation that is assuming an increasingly important, and controversial, role in e-commerce.

The company reported net income of $7 million, or 1 cent a share, on sales of $12.8 billion. It was less profit than analysts had estimated, but the revenue was in line with forecasts.

Online sales are soaring. State budget deficits are growing. And tax-free Internet sales are once again in the spotlight. Congress is considering bills that would “level the playing field” by allowing states to require all online merchants doing business in that state to collect sales tax. Web retailers have largely had a free ride since a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that only merchants with a physical presence in a state are responsible for collecting sales tax.

Recently ousted Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has landed a new job leading ShopRunner, an online service that provides two-day shipping from a variety of Internet retailers... ShopRunner began as part of GSI Commerce, which eBay bought for $2.4 billion last year. After that deal closed, eBay spun off ShopRunner into another company but still retains a 30 percent stake in the service.

To meet online competition, shopping malls are signing tenants that offer dining, hairstyling, craft-making and other things the Internet can’t provide.

Amazon has set a torrid hiring pace in recent months, accelerating a rate of employee acquisitions that was already well ahead of most large corporations.