Competitors selling online stand to make higher margins than those selling through retail outlets.
And yet Facebook makes most of its revenue simply selling online real estate for ads.
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Google is expected to surpass rival Facebook in selling online "display" advertisements in the U.S. this year.
That means gigabytes of data that can be used to streamline the business of buying and selling online.
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Apple has spoken to government officials about changing restrictions that prevent it from selling online, a government official says.
And whereas Google has focused on selling online advertising to companies, both Apple and Amazon have a history of pitching to consumers.
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"Selling online ads is not a typical business for Microsoft, " Rosoff says.
"These kind of criminal businesses are drawn to selling online for the same reasons as legitimate businesses, " says Fred Felman, a spokesman for MarkMonitor.
More recently, Yahoo grappled with the rise of Facebook while failing to establish a big footprint in mobile devices and new methods of selling online ads.
Three of the biggest theater chains not selling online tickets for a massive (and probably somewhat front-loaded) franchise picture could theoretically make a dent in its opening weekend.
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Add-on innovations should make buying and selling online even easier.
The problem, say Winn and Power, wasn't the strategy of selling online at cut-rate prices--it was the failure to implement Winn's revolutionary retailing vision and to utilize his talents.
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Google, the developer of the world's most popular Internet search engine, generates billions of dollars in revenues annually from selling online advertising services, including the delivery of targeted ads online.
Under the name MC Yogi, Mr. Giacomini began writing, recording and selling online yoga-centric rap songs, such as "Be the Change, " a hip-hop telling of the story of Mahatma Gandhi.
In addition to enterprise search, Google also began selling an online applications product last May.
In effect, Mac users are acting as guinea pigs for a new way of selling music online.
Back then, he says, everyone thought that selling films online would be a huge business by now.
But to outsiders the lesson seemed to be that selling to online consumers was actually a difficult, unglamorous business.
Under the proposal, state lotteries would be prohibited from selling tickets online, although some games would be allowed in public places over public networks.
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Each of the big record companies has now signed up to one of two plans to set up a secure way of selling music online.
Meanwhile, the league itself has benefited from Mr. Lin's emergence: his jersey has been the NBA's top-selling jersey online since his run began Feb. 4.
Akamai started landing industrial companies who were selling more online.
Before that Browett was at Tesco.com: selling groceries online also sounds like a strange start for someone hired to run a very upscale retail experience like the Apple stores.
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Microsoft is more interested in selling premium online ads, which run on highly trafficked areas such as the MSN home page or are shown on its Xbox 360 video game console.
Mobile commerce is not just about selling products online.
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Since sites selling art online are unencumbered by the physical infrastructure of the traditional gallery or auction house, they can also make their commissions lower and the whole business of buying art much cheaper and more accessible.
While we're asking, what else can Amazon tell us about the future of online selling?
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