E-commerce, Retailer | featured news

Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos received $1.68 million in total compensation for 2011, the same as in the prior year.

Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it agreed to buy Kiva Systems Inc for $775 million in cash, a deal that will bring more robotic technology to the e-commerce company's giant network of warehouses.

In a letter posted on the Zappos Web site, the company's chief executive said a "criminal" might have obtained customers' names, addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card information.

The Kindle Fire tablet may be the hottest selling gadget this holiday, pressuring Amazon.com Inc's profit margins but giving the world's largest Internet retailer potentially millions of new high-spending customers.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is a Catch-22 for retailers: The $199 tablet computer could both help Christmas traffic and hurt future sales.

After months of speculation, it's here: Amazon's tablet, the $199 Kindle Fire, was unveiled Wednesday. Smaller and cheaper than Apple's dominant iPad, the Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and runs on a heavily customized version of Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android operating system. The tablet offers Wi-Fi connectivity, but no 3G or other cellular connection. It also lacks a camera and microphone, two features found in most rival tablets.

Lawmakers on Friday sent Gov. Jerry Brown a compromise bill that delays California's effort to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect the state's sales taxes while retailers lobby Congress for national rules governing online sales taxes. The state Assembly approved AB155 on a bipartisan, 59-8 vote in the final hours of this year's legislative session. The bill had passed the Senate, 36-1, hours earlier.

Amazon.com is testing a major redesign of its website, an overhaul that could refashion the way people shop on the world's largest online retailer.

Amazon.com Inc has proposed a hiring spree of 7,000 jobs in California if state leaders put a recently enacted online sales tax on hold for two years.

A coalition of giant, brick-and-mortar retailers and their legislative allies have come up with a new strategy to try to head off Amazon.com's referendum to overturn the state's new Internet sales tax law.