ecommerce

An Australian police remanded a 35-year-old man from the country town of Castlemaine in Victoria for making an order of bomb-making equipment on eBay at an amount of $AU17,000.

Talking at the Bendigo Magistrates Court, Phillip Marsh explained that his aim was to “make fireworks” out of his purchased materials that included potassium nitrate, charcoal powder, sulphur, detonator cord, and military paraphernalia including anti-personnel mines.

European Union court ruled this week that eBay might become liable for trademark infringements made by its users who sell counterfeit goods under the established global brands if the ecommerce giant is found playing active role in this.

The auction site may also have to actively monitor its customers to ensure their offers for sale are lawful, the court ruled.

A Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba Group is developing a mobile operating system which will be launched in the third quarter, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The mobile operating system, to be developed by Alibaba's cloud computing unit, will also provide mobile applications, the paper said quoting an unnamed source close to the matter.

Baidu, Chinese top search engine, is also developing its own mobile operating system based on Google’s Android platform, according to recent reports in the local media sources
 

Ecommerce giant eBay announced that it completed the acquisition of GSI Commerce reported back in March. eBay has purchased all outstanding shares of GSI at $29.25 pher share in cash, adding up to about $2.4 billion.

GSI Commerce will continue to operate as a separate business from eBay, and will be led by Chris Saridakis as its newly appointed president. He will report directly to John Donahoe, eBay’s President and CEO.

On Thursday Alibaba Group said that it has reorganized its ecommerce business Taobao, largest ecommerce website in China. The business has been split into three separate services.

In Q1 of the year Taobao shared 70% of all online sales in China and it has been valued by Goldman Sachs at about $7 billion.

Effective from Thursday the decision splits the company into three services: search engine eTao, business-to-consumer website Taobao Mall and consumer-to-consumer website Taobao.com.

An ecommerce giant eBay is looking for more acquisitions to tap into the image recognition and augmented reality market as it is significantly losing to its rival Amazon.

Amazon.com has already adopted image recognition which allows users to shot an object with their camera or phone and send image to the website and find a match in the online store and buy it within seconds.

A provider of ecommerce solutions Digital River Inc has partnered with PayPal. Now an eBay subsidiary payment system is implementing Digital River® World Payments™ solution to support local online payment processing in Brazil and Mexico.

“Digital River World Payments is a very important part of our payments program and will definitely offer a key structure support for the expansion of the company in Brazil,” said Mario Mello, PayPal’s general manager for Brazil.

Yahoo Inc. and Alibaba Group made a statement on Sunday that they are negotiating to resolve differences over the spin-off of Alibaba’s online payment business Alipay.

A Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba and major stockholders Yahoo and Softbank Corp. are in talks “to resolve the outstanding issues related to online payment system Alipay in a manner that serves the interests of all shareholders as soon as possible,” the statement said.

The first quarter turned profitable for eBay who makes every effort to make its marketplaces more attractive to online shoppers. More people were purchasing items on the ecommerce site and more merchants used its PayPal payment system.

The first quarter revenue increased by 15.9% to $2.55 billion supported by a 23% growth at PayPal and a 12% rise at its marketplaces, says eBay.

EBay is in the final stages of a three-year plan to revitalize its marketplaces unit, whose growth had slowed.

An ecommerce giant eBay plans to purchase Where, a company that provides local advertising to mobile phones.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed by eBay but it said that it expects to close it in the second quarter of 2011. The purchase would not affect the results of the earlier forecast, said the company in a blog post announcement.

eBay believes the deal would enhance its ability to connect retailers and shoppers.

eBay Inc plans to purchase most of the stake in a Turkish auction website GittiGidiyor as a part of its move to strengthen its main business. The US-based ecommerce giant bought a minority stake in Istanbul-based GittiGidiyor in 2007 and said on Tuesday that it would buy more shares to raise its ownership to 93 percent. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deals comes two weeks after the company announced its plans to buy e-commerce service provider GSI Commerce for $2 billion, a deal seen as an attempt to rival No. 1 Web retailer Amazon.com Inc.

A global provider of ecommerce and payment processing services First Data announced the launch of its eCommerce fraud detection and prevention solution Fraud FlexDetectSM, built in collaboration with Accertify.

This week an ecommerce advocate made a forecast saying that proposed changes to European rules on product returns could cost online retailers 10 billion euros ($14 billion) a year which would prevent further growth and impose higher prices on consumers.

IMRG says that the cost of draft amendments to the European Union's (EU) Consumer Rights Directive, voted through last week, equated to 4 percent of the estimated value of Europe's e-commerce industry in 2012.

Gap Inc, a US apparel brand, opened its online store on China’s largest ecommerce market Taobao this week in a move to achieve savvy Chinese shoppers of a moderate income group.

Gap opened its store on Taobao Mall, in addition to such brands as Adidas AG, Levi Strauss & Co and Japan's Uniqlo, Taobao said in a statement.

eBay Inc has made a takeover offering to an ecommerce service provider GSI Commerce, a deal that may rival Amazon.com Inc. The online auction company wants to purchase GSI for a price of $1.96 billion.

This week eBay offered GSI shareholders $29.25 per share in cash, a premium of 50.9 percent from the stock's closing price on Friday.

"It's one of the few fulfillment operations that could rival Amazon," BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. "Amazon is fulfilling its third-party sellers more and more. eBay is all third-party sellers."