Retail, Online Retailer | featured news

U.S. online retail sales through the first 40 days of the 2010 holiday shopping season are up 12% from a year ago, according to a Sunday update from ComScore.

Online retailers experienced a sales surge Monday, capping off a holiday shopping week in which more Americans than ever decided to skip the mall. Early estimates indicated overall sales gains of between 15% and 21% for "Cyber Monday," compared to a year earlier.

After brisk online sales on Thanksgiving and through the weekend, retailers plan stepped-up Web-only promotions today — known as Cyber Monday — for the expected flood of shoppers back at work or their home computers after the holiday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is going for the jugular in the holiday retailing war, announcing Thursday that it will offer free shipping on nearly 60,000 online items _ with no minimum purchase requirement.

Amazon is selling a self-published book defending pedophiles, sparking discussions about the retailer's obligation to vet items before they are sold in its online stores.

Rumor of this buyout has been zipping over the web all weekend, but Amazon has finally confirmed: It's acquired Quidsi, the parent company of online retail sites Diapers.com, Soap.com, and BeautyBar.com. The deal is remarkably similar to the one it did last year with Zappos, purveyors of footwear to the Internet-minded.

Amazon.com has reached an agreement to buy the Spanish internet retailer BuyVip for around $96.5 million, a person close to the matter said.

Services like Groupon and TheFind.com are using social media and other online tools to lure ever more customers.

The numbers are in. And they look good.

We heard strong reports for online traffic Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but today, comScore added definitive spending numbers that indicate tha