It is not a surprise, that both Google and Amazon want a slice of PayPal's cake. In the most recent quarter, PayPal had net revenues of $454 million, up 34% over the $339 million reported in Q2-06. More importantly, PayPal Merchant Services transactions jumped 57% to $4.92 billion globally from the $3.13 billion reported in Q2-06.

S3 is proving to be particularly attractive to community-based media companies - homegrown photos, video, even music. Altexa, Elephant Drive, Jungle Disk, MediaSilo, Ookles, Plum and SmugMug are some of the start-ups that are currently using Amazon's S3. Online photo sharing company SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill seems to be one happy customer, with a good reason!

He was facing a hefty tab for storage - Smug Mug is adding about ten terabytes worth of photos every month and claims he saved almost $500,000 in storage expenses. His monthly tab just in storage is around the $1500. An Apple 7TB XServe RAID costs about $13,000. Of course there are cheaper options, but still it is a lot of savings.

S3's early success makes you think that if the on-demand infrastructure can be delivered at an affordable price, the cost of setting up an online business is going to decline even further, perhaps prompting a whole cycle of new entrepreneurial activity. Amazon's Alexa platform plays into this trend quite well since it allows developers to process and analyze data on Amazon, store it (on S3), and serve it back out to the world. (Amazon, after all is the harbinger of Web 2.0 trends.)

The AOL job cuts, which fall in line with similar cuts made periodically over the last few years, reflect a dropping user base that has been driven by a number of factors, Grey Consulting founder and principal analyst Maurene Caplan Grey told the E-Commerce Times.

The analyst, who doubted increased user savvy was behind the cuts, indicated a recent instant messaging deal for interoperability between Microsoft and Yahoo may have also contributed to the job cuts, and further subscriber loss is likely to increase the chances of an acquisition.

Grey added that, although its user base is dropping, AOL still retains a substantial subscriber base of millions, which may be attractive, particularly to the ever-expanding Google.

In a few short years, users can expect to make telephone calls for free, with no per-minute charges, as part of a package of services through which carriers make money on advertising or transaction fees, eBay's chief executive said on Wednesday.

Seeking to justify eBay's $4 billion purchase last week of Web-based communications phenomenon Skype Technologies, Meg Whitman countered criticism by a financial analyst during the company's quarterly conference call by agreeing with some of his points.

"The percentage of users that you can actually charge for (phone services) will actually go down, so I actually agree with that and we understood that when we looked at Skype," Whitman said in responding to the analyst's question.

"In the end, the price that anyone can provide for voice transmission on the 'Net will trend toward zero," eBay's top executive said.