So an investor news service does a Google News search for “bankruptcy 2008,” finds an old article from 2002 about United going into bankruptcy, and then mistakenly publishes it as current news. United’s stock plunges 75 percent after the investor alert is circulated on Bloomberg’s news wire. So how does this happen? Somehow Google scooped up the story from the Orlando Sun-Sentinel’s archives — originally published by Chicago Tribune in 2002 — and slapped a 2008 time stamp on it. Google says the bots discovered it after the story experienced an unusual surge of activity, but Tribune says that surge happened after Google News brought it back to life. Ooops. And then this investor service doesn’t do any checking of its own, publishes an alert, which is automatically picked up by Bloomberg and seen by stock brokers everywhere in a matter of minutes. As much as it looks like Google screwed up on this one, I place more of the blame for the lack of common sense that followed. Since when does Googling something become a news story on a big financial wire without any checking?
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