Internet Business News

eBay Fined Over Perfume Sales

1st December 2009

A Court in Paris yesterday issued a fine of €1.7m (£1.5m) against eBay for allegedly violating a 2008 injunction forbidding the sale of luxury products by LVMH. ( Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy)

Ebay issued this response to the ruling, " It is abuse of 'selective distribution' that hurts consumers".

The case goes back to June 2008 when French courts fined eBay nearly €40m for failing takes measures in order to block the sales of counterfeit goods on their website.

In addition to the fine eBay was ordered to block all sales of genuine perfume brands manufactured by the LVMH because the company had trading agreements in place to control whois allowed to sell the perfumes.

Monday's fine is based on allegations that more than 1,300 LVMH items had beenlisted on eBay since the injunction, according to a post on TechCrunch Europe.

Yahoo Losing to Google and Bing

Yahoo continues to lose it's market share in the latest search engine wars whilst Google and Bing take the difference.

Google still dominates the searc hengine arena with 65.4 percent of all searches, up 0.5 market share points from September this year.

Yahoo, however is going in the other direction as Bing picks up the benefits.

Yahoo lost 0.8 market share points in October compared to September, down to 18 percent of the search engine market.

It has been in a steady decline throughout 2009, as Bing gained it's share with the relaunch: Microsoft almost cracked the 10 percent barrier in October with 9.9 percent of all searches, gaining 0.5 percentage points compared to September.

Facebook's New Privacy Policy

Facebook has announced it's decision to adopt a revised privacy policy designed to be more accessible and easier to understand.

The social network website had just completed a week-long comment period for the new revision and, although "a lot of people participated", fewer than 7,000 members commented. According to Facebook's rules, this meant that a vote was unnecessary, Michael Richter, Facebook deputy general counsel, wrote in a company blog.