E-Commerce

As widely expected, Europe's antitrust chief, Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, has issued a formal Statement of Objections (SO) regarding the operation of Google's shopping search comparison service — marking the latest step in a five-year long antitrust investigation and an escalation of European anti-competition action against Mountain View.

On April 1, super-luxury brand Chanel announced that it would be opening an e-commerce store this fall. It wasn't an April Fool's joke, and legions of fashion-forward Frenchwomen would have been forgiven for gasping in shock, since it was only in 2013 that Chanel's global director of fashion Bruno Pavlovsky said that "fashion is about clothing, and clothing you need to see, to feel, to understand."

Looks like Delia*s isn't dead after all. The (formerly) bankrupt retailer's homepage now features a "coming soon..." message complete with a #DeliasForever hashtag. A corresponding Delia*s Instagram post reads: "News flash! Delia*s will be coming back-to-school with you! Best part? Online only = ALWAYS OPEN!" Another post reveals that the shop will be back up and running online in August.

Beware peddlers of lies. Amazon is officially cracking down on phony product reviews. The e-commerce juggernaut not only forbids them on its site, it contends that they're illegal, too. Case in point: The company filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in Seattle's King County Superior Court against four websites it alleges publish fraudulent reviews that distort its product ratings.

PayPal will be free to work with online retailers and marketplaces including Amazon.com and Alibaba following its split from eBay later this year, according to a new financial filing that details the separation between the e-commerce firm and

Apple might be implementing changes that discourage the kind of hype-building launch day lines that get headlines with each new device that goes on sale, according to a new memo reportedly from Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts shared with retail store employees and obtained by Business Insider. At least for Apple Watch and the new MacBook, Ahrendts is directing store staff to push customers to order online, rather than try their luck at physical locations.

The U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust division lauded the result of its e-commerce investigation into price fixing on Amazon Marketplace. The agency alleges that online seller David Topkins and other co-conspirators fixed pricing on certain posters sold through the Marketplace from September 2013 through January 2014. Topkins, along with Jonathan Garriss and Adam Hersh, was a principal of Gotham City Online and employee of Art.com at that time. Topkins and Garriss were also co-founders of an eBay seller association called PESA. The three business partners sold Gotham City Online's poster business (Poster Revolution) to Art.com in 2012.

eBay sellers have been moving more of their business to Amazon.com for a long time, as EcommerceBytes reader surveys bear out, so it was with interest we read Bloomberg's report that seemed to state it was a recent trend. "Amazon's pool of merchants climbed to more than 2 million in 2014, while the number of sellers on eBay has remained flat at about 25 million in the past two years," the news outlet reported. However, Amazon has put its count of active sellers at "over 2 million" since at least as far back as 2011. 

There was a time when retailers could only impact their bottom line during the course of normal business hours. Now in the era of "e-everything," retailers enjoy the ringing of cash registers 24/7. From desktops to mobile devices, online stores cash in on consumers’ insatiable appetites to shop wherever and whenever. This trend helped brick-and-mortar retailers expand their reach. However, it's also become an ongoing challenge, fueling the compelling argument as to why companies, particularly online retailers, should care about serving faster web pages to their users.

Amazon.com announced yesterday the launch of a new store on its site that's dedicated to selling STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) toys and games. It seems that for Amazon, the decision to launch the new toy shop was less about wanting to spark young minds with these educational toys and games, and more about the impact to the company's bottom line. That is, the retailer notes that not only are STEM toys a "hot trend" in education, but they were also the second-most visited section and the second highest in terms of sales volume on Amazon's 2014 Holiday Toy List.