E-commerce

Amazon's revenue jumps, beats Street forecast

Amazon.com beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter revenue and earnings expectations, as the e-commerce giant posted strong holiday sales amid a weak economy.

Amazon's revenues jumped 18 percent to $6.7 billion for the quarter compared with the same period a year earlier. Wall Street had been expecting Amazon to generate sales of $6.4 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

The company reported a 9 percent increase in net income to $225 million for the quarter, or 52 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting a net profit of 50 cents a share, excluding stock options … Read more

Tech layoffs up nearly 75 percent in 2008

Correction, 12:50 p.m. PST: This story initially mischaracterized a statement made by John Challenger regarding the severity of recent tech-related job cuts. He does not expect them to be as severe as those during the dot-com bust. Also the percentage figures cited within the various sectors reflect the increase in layoffs last year compared with 2007, and not the percentage of jobs cut.

Job cuts in the tech sector increased 74.2 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, as the industry was battered by an unrelenting wave of layoffs, according to a report released Thursday.

Last … Read more

Internet users worldwide surpass 1 billion

McDonald's restaurants and global Internet usage share something in common: more than 1 billion served within a month.

Global Internet usage reached more than 1 billion unique visitors in December, with 41.3 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, according to a report released Friday by ComScore.

The study looked at Internet users over the age of 15 who accessed the Net from their home or work computers. Europe grabbed the next largest slice of the global Internet audience, with 28 percent, followed by the United States, with an 18.4 percent slice.

But Latin America, while comprising just 7.… Read more

NetApp tops 'Best Companies to Work For' list

Storage maker NetApp ranked No. 1 on Fortune magazine's list of the top 100 companies to work for, bumping Google from its perch, according to a report in the publication on Thursday.

NetApp, which employs nearly 8,000 people worldwide, was selected for its "employees enthusiasm," along with its benefits from nearly $11,400 in adoption aid to five paid days to do volunteer work.

And even better still, the company is one of the few in the hiring mode during these recessionary times, seeking to fill 55 positions as of January 13.

This year's ranking … Read more

eBay reports revenue and earnings decline

Facing a tight economic climate and strong dollar overseas, eBay reported on Wednesday a 7 percent revenue drop in the fourth quarter and weaker net profits.

Shares of eBay, in after-hours trading, fell 6.25 percent to $12.45. The stock rose nearly 6 percent to close at $13.28 a share during regular trading.

The online auction giant reported revenue of $2.07 billion, down 7 percent from a year ago. That figure fell short of analysts' expectations of $2.12 billion in revenue.

eBay's net income, meanwhile, fell nearly 31 percent to $367 million in the fourth … Read more

Coupons.com hires Google Android executive

Steve Horowitz, engineering director of Google's Android project to build a Linux-based open-source phone operating system, has left the company to become chief technology officer of Coupons.com.

"The company is at a pivotal point in its business, and I am eager to help further advance its development and deployment of new platforms and services for digital promotions," Horowitz said in a statement Tuesday.

Coupons.com offers coupons online. Using its technology, people printed coupons worth more than $300 million in 2008, up 140 percent from 2007, the company said, but it's not clear how many … Read more

IT venture investing posts worst Q4 in a decade

Venture capital investments in IT companies plunged 40 percent to $2.18 billion in the fourth quarter, their worst level in a decade, according to figures released late Friday by VentureSource.

The data further confirms concerns entrepreneurs have already been raising about a funding pullback by VCs over the second half of the year and dire warnings by the VCs themselves, such as Sequoia Capital's infamous R.I.P. PowerPoint presentation.

IT Venture capital dropped to $11.64 billion for all of 2008, down 14.5 percent from the previous year, according to VentureSource. During the past year, IT … Read more

Music sales for 2008 ride digital coattails

Digital music, long the bane of the music industry, may finally be something that record label executives can smile about.

For 2008, total music sales rose 10 percent to 1.51 billion units sold, up from 1.36 billion units the year before, according to industry tracker Nielsen. Units tallied include physical albums, digital albums and tracks, and music videos.

The biggest contributor to the growth was digital music, Nielsen reported. There were 1.07 billion digital tracks sold in 2008, up 27 percent from 2007, and there were 65.8 million digital albums sold, up 32 percent.

Those numbers … Read more

Online holiday sales drop 3 percent

Online holiday spending declined 3 percent compared with last year's online shopping season, the first negative growth rate in the past eight years, according to a ComScore report released Tuesday.

Between November 1 and December 23, U.S. online merchants recorded $25.5 billion in sales, down from $26.3 billion during the same period last year, ComScore reported. Gian Fulgoni, the research firm's chairman, blamed economic pessimism for the poor results:

The combination of having five fewer shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the severe economic headwinds faced by consumers has made this a really tough … Read more