E-commerce, Retailer | featured news

Wal-Mart revamped its e-commerce management on Friday, placing the heads of stores in developed countries in charge of their online businesses and announcing the departure of two top U.S. Internet executives.

The online retailer wants voters to strike down the California law requiring the company to collect sales taxes. Wal-Mart, labor groups and other opponents could wage a costly, noisy battle against such a referendum. Escalating its fight to thwart a new levy on Internet purchases, Amazon.com says it will ask California voters to overturn a state law requiring all companies with operations or affiliates here to collect sales tax.

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.”

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.

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.

Online retailers experienced a sales surge Monday, capping off a holiday shopping week in which more Americans than ever decided to skip the mall. Early estimates indicated overall sales gains of between 15% and 21% for "Cyber Monday," compared to a year earlier.

Shoppers who skipped the crowds on Black Friday gave online merchants a 16 percent spike in revenue, according to data released Saturday....

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is going for the jugular in the holiday retailing war, announcing Thursday that it will offer free shipping on nearly 60,000 online items _ with no minimum purchase requirement.