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Venture capital investments tumbled another 26 percent in the third quarter, with quarterly funding levels falling below US$5 billion for the first time since 1998, according to a new report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association. ...

E-tail giant Amazon.com said sales grew 33 percent year-over-year to US$851 million in the third quarter, fueled by its free shipping offer in the United States and by dramatic expansion in overseas sales. ...

Microsoft has announced it will pay US$96 million in cash to acquire Vicinity, a firm that helps customers locate nearby merchants. The move eliminates a competitor and may reignite talk of a possible Microsoft buying spree ...

Few companies would be likely to admit it, and even fewer would be willing to talk about it publicly, but layoffs can have business benefits that go well beyond short-term cost savings. When done right, they can even help improve morale by reassuring employees that their employer can make tough decisions for the good of the business. ...

Microsoft reported a strong first quarter, with profit nearly doubling and revenues rising as the software giant began to convert customers to a new yearly payment plan. But news of a US$2.71 billion profit from the Redmond, Washington, software giant was not enough to power the stock market forward. ...

Intel on Tuesday announced earnings of $686 million, missing analysts' estimates, and said the usually robust fourth quarter likely will prove a disappointment as well. Despite its earnings shortfall, the company did hit revenue targets for the quarter ...

Affluent Americans make up the fastest-growing online segment, with the number of online households earning more than US$100,000 annually rising more than 50 percent in the past year, according to a report from Nielsen//NetRatings. ...

Microsoft has announced that it plans to spend US$300 million to promote its MSN Internet service, casting a shadow over the glittery New York release of AOL version 8.0, which continues to be the world's most widely used online service ...

There are now an estimated 220 million active Internet users worldwide, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, but the value of that audience seems to be falling even as it grows in size and scope. ...

A federal judge has ruled that Intel's (Nasdaq: INTC) Itanium chip line infringes a smaller company's patented technology and has ordered the chipmaker to pay US$150 million in damages. ...

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) today unveiled new Office software, called Xdocs, which allows corporate workers to better share data by using a Web browser. Though the concept is hardly new, the innovation that Microsoft hopes will sell this new product, is that the data entered into Web forms, can be formatted using the XML (extensible markup language) standard...

An expected upturn in spending on information technology is taking longer than anticipated to materialize, and the sector will post much weaker growth than previously forecast for 2002, according to two new reports. ...

When Cisco CEO John Chambers announced he received US$1 in salary during the past year, the move was seen as largely symbolic. He still received millions of stock options, after all. But thousands of technology workers who have seen their salaries stop climbing -- and in some cases fall in real-dollar terms -- during the past two years could certainly relate.

Despite high-profile layoff announcements from IBM and others, the third quarter was a relatively quiet one for job cuts in the technology sector, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. ...

EBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) has launched a sports-themed section on its auction site, combining existing memorabilia, ticketing and experiences, sporting goods and licensed merchandise pages into a single section that it says will generate US$1 billion in sales this year. ...

Remember when the tech rebound was supposed to happen during 2002? Now, a recent Goldman Sachs report has pushed back a meaningful rebound in corporate IT spending until mid-2003 at the earliest, predicting flat numbers until then. Many of the largest companies are still mourning truckloads of cash spent on the latest gadgets during the tech boom.

Seeking to recoup millions of dollars that he maintains rightfully belong to shareholders, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has filed a civil suit against five telecom executives who profited from IPOs during the late 1990s and into 2002 ...

Two years after it angered privacy advocates by altering its privacy policy, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) has told a group of state attorneys general that it will change the guidelines again to make them more consumer-friendly. ...

Three former Homestore.com (Nasdaq: HOMS) executives plan to plead guilty to charges stemming from millions of dollars of accounting misstatements and reportedly will cooperate with investigators as a federal probe moves forward. ...

In the post-boom era of e-commerce, the gurus whose ideas and actions set the bar and tone for the industry may seem familiar. Although yesteryear's fast-growth mantra has been replaced by a different chant -- profits, profits! -- first-wave icons like Jeff Bezos of Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Meg Whitman of eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) are still leading the way.