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If Wal-Mart, the world’s largest bricks-and-mortar retailer, is serious about competing more directly with Amazon - as it has suggested by testing a free shipping club - then it may have to spend well beyond a previously announced investment target on big distribution centers and other costs for its plan. Wal-Mart’s sluggish quarterly results that were released on Tuesday highlighted the importance of growing its online business. Online revenues grew 17 percent globally in the first quarter ended April 30, against a slight drop in overall sales. However, investments in e-commerce shaved 2 cents off the retailer’s earnings per share,...

During the company's earnings call, eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said 2015 would present "real challenges" and forecast that "it will get worse before it gets better." Separately, the company said it entered into an agreement with billionaire activist Carl Icahn, the company's largest active shareholder, and will appoint Jonathan Christodoro, Icahn's pick, to its board.

Big layoffs are coming to eBay. The company is planning to slash 2,400 workers across the eBay and PayPal parts of the business. The cuts will impact 7% of the workforce. The layoffs will be made before the end of March. EBay said it was "simplifying organizational structures" in its quarterly earnings released Wednesday. A company spokesperson told CNNMoney that some of the cuts were to unfilled positions, but would not say how many.

Starting in the mid-1990s, "the mall genie was out of the bottle," says one mall analyst, "and it was never going to come back." While about 80% of the country’s 1,200 malls are considered healthy (vacancy rates of 10% or less), that compares with 94% in 2006; and more than 30 million square feet of malls are more than 40% empty, a threshold that signals the beginning of what one one analyst called "the death spiral." As The NY Times reports, like beached whales, dead malls draw fascination as well as dismay, "nobody ever thinks a mall is going to...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has informed managers of its roughly 5,000 stores across the United States that they can match prices with Amazon.com Inc and other online retailers, the head of the company's U.S. business said on Thursday.

Amazon.com Inc. reports quarter three earnings today and analysts are expecting a loss of $0.75 per share according to FactSet. That’s a significant jump from their loss of $0.09 per share for the same period last year. Amazon follows a “profitless prosperity” model so losses aren’t unexpected, and typically Wall Street shrugs them off. This year, however, Amazon (AMZN) has seen more than a 20% drop in value on the NASDAQ. Wall Street is becoming restless-- is it time for Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos to start focusing on the bottom line? Yahoo Finance’s Henry Blodget believes that investors are clearly...

SEATTLE - Popular online retailer Zulily is planning to add about 900 jobs in central Ohio as part of new tax credit deal from the state. The Seattle-based company says most of the positions at the new call center will be in customer service. The move is expected to generate $28 million by 2017. This comes in addition to Zulily’s existing facility in Obetz. As part of a tax agreement, the Ohio Development Services Agency says the company will receive a 75%, 12-year tax credit in exchange for operating in Ohio for at least 15 years. Zulily is an online...

Federal Express was indicted Thursday on federal charges alleging that it distributed prescription drugs and other controlled substances to people that the company knew had no prescriptions on behalf of illegal Internet pharmacies. "We want to be clear what's at stake here: The government is suggesting that FedEx assume criminal responsibility for the legality of the contents of the millions of packages that we pick up and deliver every day,” said Patrick Fitzgerald, a senior FedEx official. “We are a transportation company -- we are not law enforcement. We have no interest in violating the privacy of our customers. We...

The online auction and sales giant eBay posted a message Wednesday morning saying that it had been hacked, urging all of its members to change their passwords. The company said in a statement that a database containing encrypted passwords had been breached, but that financial data, including credit card information, was stored separately and was still safe. Hackers were able to gain access to eBay employee log-ins, eBay said, which in turn gave them access to the encoded passwords. eBay says that no unauthorized transactions have yet been made with the information. But if you’re an eBay user, you still...

Wayfair is an e-commerce site selling home furnishings. But with 1,600 employees, its physical presence is rapidly outgrowing its space in an obelisklike skyscraper in Boston’s Back Bay–which happens to be a former hub of the Christian Science church. Long gone are the white shag carpets, wood paneling and executive-floor elevators that once allowed church higher-ups to avoid hoi polloi. Flat-panel TVs on each of 12 floors beam not messages of faith healing but maps of the U.S. and Europe that light up whenever there’s a sale. Within seconds Katherine from Decatur, Tex. buys a $49 tungsten wedding ring, Jen...

Bitcoin is making news again. Angry investors in the virtual currency are joining a class action to recover nearly US$500 million “lost” when Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange, crashed at the end of February 2014. The collapse of the exchange is reported to be the result of theft by hackers. In another recent story, US magazine Newsweek claims to have tracked down the mysterious founder of the “crypto-currency”, a Mr Nakamoto in California. Bitcoin’s website names “Satoshi Nakamoto” as the currency’s founder but many believe that is a pseudonym. Bitcoin is associated with some high profile criminal investigations, including...

Brick-and-mortar retailers have been suffering from slow economic activity for years, as well as from increased competition from online retailers. The rise in store closings is a prominent sign of their struggles. Weakened companies cannot afford the real estate and personnel costs that go along with supporting hundreds of unprofitable locations. The clearest proof of the problem was Radio ShackÂ’s recent decision to close more than 1,000 stores. Radio Shack is hardly alone. During that last several years Gap has closed 20% of its locations. Even MacyÂ’s, which has forecast strong earnings and is considered the most successful of the...

Twitter is exploring ways to sell products directly from the 140-character missives the one-to-many text messaging service site is famous for, a technology news site has reported. Re/Code on Friday posted a screen shot of what this new service could look like, integrated into the site's familiar baby blue interface. It said it found the image posted on e-commerce site Fancy.com, which appeared to be working on a partnership with Twitter. In the screenshot, which is no longer able to be viewed, certain tweets are tagged "Twitter Commerce" and, when expanded, show a green "Buy with Fancy" button. The purchaser...

The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to discount tremendously to drive sales. The other talked about how an enormous late surge in packages coming from e-commerce companies overwhelmed the capacity of UPS and, to a lesser extent, FedEx, and caused many of these packages to arrive after Christmas. But, to me, these two stories are not at all separate, they simply reflect different sides of the same narrative: We’re in the midst of a...

“Every day is now an Amazon delivery day.” So says Dave Clark, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide operations and customer service, announcing a deal with the United States Postal Service that will allow the delivery of Amazon purchases on Sunday. Clark is guilty of some exaggeration. To qualify, you must be a member of Amazon’s $79-a-year Amazon Prime program. And when the service begins on Nov. 17, it will only be available in New York and Los Angeles, though there are plans to gradually expand to other cities. But the gist is clear: Amazon’s message to everyone who has lived...

Gun sales booming on Instagram By Jeane MacIntoshPublished October 23, 2013New York Post The gun market is booming on Instagram. The popular photo-posting app – bought last year by Facebook for $1 billion – has become the go-to place for folks looking to buy and sell firearms on the Internet, boasting a web of private owners and professional dealers with shotguns, handguns and assault rifles for sale on the open market, according to a report by The Daily Beast. Instagram is not an e-commerce site, and has no stated policy barring firearm sales. Users of the app can readily find...

The majority of Americans have now filed their taxes. And the majority of Americans have done so incorrectly. There is one mistake, in particular, that lots of people made: They bought tax-free things online or in another state — and they failed to pay tax on their purchase in their home state. It's called a use tax. As far as I can tell, accountants and tax lawyers are some of the only people who pay it. Forty-five states have a use tax. About 1.6 percent of the taxpayers in those 45 states actually pay the use tax. So I figured...

These are the types of invasive tax maneuvers that boiled the blood of our Founding Fathers. But there's still a way out of all our Internal Revenue Service wars and woes. U.S. News & World Report highlighted some more encroaching news this past week in the article "IRS High-Tech Tools Track Your Digital Footprints." The IRS is "collecting a lot more than taxes this year," the report explained. "It's also acquiring a huge volume of personal information on taxpayers' digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records." It...

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Gov. Chris Gregoire's time in office may be best remembered for the major deals she helped broker, often in late-night bargaining sessions in which negotiators were ordered to find a resolution. Now the Democrat, two months away from leaving Washington state government, is looking to finalize one more big agreement.

Federal officials take down 132 websites in 'Cyber Monday' crackdownBy Brendan Sasso - 11/26/12 12:20 PM ET U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and European officials seized 132 websites on Monday for allegedly selling counterfeit merchandise in a coordinated crackdown timed to coincide with the holiday shopping season. It is the third straight year that the government has seized websites on "Cyber Monday" — the marketing term for the Monday after Thanksgiving, when many online retailers offer steep discounts and promotions. ICE's Homeland Security Investigations unit coordinated with officials from Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania, the United Kingdom and the European Police...