SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – EBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe began emailing millions of users of the company’s online marketplace on Sunday in an unprecedented lobbying effort to change looming Federal sales tax legislation.

The e-commerce giant plans to send emails from Donahoe to at least 40 million eBay users, including most sellers on the marketplace. The first messages were sent out Sunday morning.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s experiment with original video production took a big step forward on Friday as the company posted 14 pilot TV shows on the Internet for free viewing.

Amazon, the world’s largest Internet retailer, has been filming pilots in recent months for comedy and kids TV shows such as Alpha House, Betas and Teeny Tiny Dogs.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – EBay Inc on Wednesday gave a disappointing earnings forecast for the second quarter, and its shares slipped in after-hours trade.

The e-commerce company forecast a second-quarter profit of 61 to 63 cents per share and revenue of $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc has grabbed more than a fifth of the market for digital music downloads, helped by the launch of its own tablet computers and aggressive pricing, according to an industry study released on Tuesday.

AmazonMP3, the online retailer’s digital music business, had 22 percent of the market for music downloads in the United States in last year’s fourth quarter, research firm the NPD Group said in its Annual Music Study.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc increased stock compensation for key executives in 2012 as the world’s largest Internet retailer stepped up competition with Apple Inc, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.

In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Amazon added Apple to the peer group it uses to help determine how much to pay executives.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc
increased stock compensation for key executives in 2012 as the
world’s largest Internet retailer stepped up competition with
Apple Inc, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.

In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Amazon added Apple to the peer group it uses to help determine
how much to pay executives.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – PayPal said on Thursday it acquired start-up Iron Pearl, bringing noted “growth hackers” Stan Chudnovsky and James Currier on board to help the online payments service expand more quickly.

PayPal, part of eBay Inc, did not disclose a purchase price.

PayPal is a dominant online payments service with more than 120 million users, but its growth has slowed in recent years and the company’s new president, David Marcus, is looking for ways to revive that.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Foursquare said on Thursday it raised $41 million in a new financing round that relied on debt, rather than equity, to give the location-based start-up the money it needs to keep expanding.

The cash came from a new investment by technology private-equity firm Silver Lake, through its Waterman growth debt fund, as well as existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley wrote in a blog.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – PayPal will soon be ubiquitous in U.S. retail stores, but just being there may not be enough.

The online payment service will take a giant step beyond its Internet roots on April 19, when a partnership with Discover Financial Services (DFS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) officially kicks in. The deal means PayPal will be accepted as a payment option in roughly 2 million retail stores that already take Discover credit cards.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – PayPal will soon be ubiquitous in U.S. retail stores, but just being there may not be enough.

The online payment service will take a giant step beyond its Internet roots on April 19, when a partnership with Discover Financial Services officially kicks in. The deal means PayPal will be accepted as a payment option in roughly 2 million retail stores that already take Discover credit cards.