PayPal to overtake eBay

PayPal is just over a third of eBay's revenue at the moment, but the online payment service will ultimately be bigger than the company's flagship e-commerce site, its chief executive said to CNET News.

"PayPal is a business that will be bigger than eBay," CEO John Donahoe said in a talk at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. However, he said that shift will take four to six years.

Donahoe's comments came just as the company announced it is opening up its PayPal platform to third-party developers. "There is this opportunity for an explosion of growth."

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos issued a public apology for the deletion of two George Orwell novels, '1984' and 'Animal Farm', from the Kindle e-reader device, reports eWeek.

Although the novels were pulled over a copyright dispute, the spectre of Big Brother-style interference was such that Bezos decided an apology was needed.

Amazon is seeking to dominate the e-reader space with its Kindle, although it faces the prospect of competition from Plastic Logic and other companies.

Gartner has warned financial institutions that they could lose online banking customers by failing to focus sufficiently on personalisation, states Computing.co.uk.

The analyst firm surveyed nearly 4 000 consumers in the US and UK to examine attitudes and behaviour towards retail payments, banking and investment services.

Respondents were asked about 18 different online banking features, and security came out top followed by single-sign on services.