(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc said customers ordered 34.4 million items worldwide during its highly publicized Prime Day sale, breaking the record set by last year's Black Friday sale.
Read more(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc launched its one-hour order delivery service, Prime Now, for some areas of London on Tuesday, about six months after introducing the service in the United States. Amazon Prime members can have orders worth 20 pounds ($31.43) or more delivered in one hour for a fee of 6.99 pounds, the company said on its UK website on Tuesday.
Read moreA man in the United Arab Emirates was sentenced to three years in jail on Monday for Twitter posts allegedly insulting the Gulf country’s Supreme Court, a local newspaper reported. Nasser al-Faresi, 27, allegedly called the proceedings of a 2012 sedition trial a “judicial farce” and insulted the UAE’s president and Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, according to The National.
Read moreBy Mari Saito SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc sharply cut the number of Confederate flag products on their sites a day after vowing to remove them, but in a sign of the difficulty of removing controversial content, Nazi-era memorabilia are listed on both sites. EBay specifically bans their sale while Amazon bans the sale of “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.” It is difficult to enforce a complete ban on controversial products, analysts said, because of technological hurdles in flagging and pulling down banned items. Amazon, which on Tuesday had listed nearly 30,000 items in a search for “Confederate flag”, had almost nothing for sale with the flag late afternoon Wednesday
Read moreBy Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators have asked e-commerce retailers to spell out the kind of sanctions imposed on them for going against digital content companies’ orders to restrict cross-border online sales, as part of a broad probe to root out anti-competitive online practices. The European Commission, which launched the investigation last month, is looking to overhaul the 28-country bloc’s digital market to boost growth and innovation and catch up with the United States and Asia.
Read more(Reuters) – Television network HBO said it would offer the premiere episodes of two new comedy series on Facebook, underlining the growing popularity of the social networking site as a video platform. With about 1.44 billion monthly active users, Facebook has become a sough-after outlet for companies looking to market their products via online videos, the fastest growing category of Internet ads
Read moreThe e-commerce company for the first time broke out financial details of its secretive cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, on Thursday, saying revenue jumped almost 50 percent to $1.57 billion, or about 7 percent of total revenue. The unit's operating income grew 8 percent to $265 million.
Read moreMicrosoft Corp on Thursday reported revenue and profit above Wall Street expectations, as sales of its hardware and cloud-computing services helped to offset a decline in the company's core Windows business. “The Street will cheer these results as it appears Microsoft is back on the right track after a head-scratching performance last quarter.” Sales of Windows to computer manufacturers to install on new PCs fell 19 percent in the quarter, reflecting a sharp dip from a year ago when Windows got a brief boost from consumers rushing to buy new machines after Microsoft stopped support for the 14-year-old XP operating system. Microsoft's overall revenue rose 6 percent to $21.7 billion, above Wall Street's average forecast of $21.1 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Read more(Reuters) – Amazon.com is in talks to buy online luxury retailer Net-a-porter in what could be the biggest acquisition yet for the e-commerce giant, but the negotiations are in early stages and could fall apart, Forbes reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. The potential deal, first reported by Women's Wear Daily, could value Net-a-Porter lower than the valuation of 2 billion euros ($2.16 billion) reported by the fashion industry trade journal, Forbes reported on Thursday, citing the person. Seattle-based Amazon has long eyed the high-end fashion retail sector and any deal for Net-a-Porter would mean a new commitment in an area where the company lacks a strong presence, Forbes said.
Read more(Reuters) – Twitter Inc launched a video streaming app called Periscope on Thursday, just days after reports that it had blocked a rival app called Meerkat. Meerkat relies heavily on Twitter and has become hugely popular in the month since its launch.
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