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GoogleBot Blamed for UAL (United Airlines) Stock Crash
UAL Corporation (NasdaqGS: UAUA), the parent company of United Airlines saw it’s stock plummet to low of $2 per share in trading on Monday, due in part to a mis-dated article concerning UAL’s 2002 filing for bankruptcy which appeared on Google News on Monday. The six year old article was made to appear current to Google News users and the mis-dated story was blamed for a steep drop in UAL’s stock price and lead to the airline releasing a clarification for worried investors that they had not filed for bankruptcy.
Infoweek elaborated on the fiasco :
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The problem started when Googlebot, the software program that Google News uses to index news sites, mistook one of the most popular stories on the Web site of The Sun-Sentinel, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for breaking news. The story, “United Airlines Files for Bankruptcy,” was then posted on Google News as a new story, even though the original news story was published on Dec. 10, 2002. |
The Securities and Exchange Commission will be opening a preliminary probe into the drop in UAL’s stock, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday afternoon. Although the robe is in the preliminary stages and may not result in a full investigation, the SEC will still be looking at if there was any negligent or improperr behavior behind the release of a six year old story as current news.
The problem began when a single internet visitor in the wee hours of Sunday morning, a period of low traffic to the newspaper’s business section, bumped it into a “Popular Stories” section of the newspaper’s Web site. A subsequent visit to the story resulted in the Googlebot crawling the story again.
“This time, despite the fact that the URL to the old story hadn’t changed, despite the fact that Googlebot had seen this story previously, it was apparently treated as though it was breaking news,” it said.
Tribune (NYSE: TXA), the parent copany of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, said it asked Google “months ago” to stop using Googlebot to crawl its Web sites after it identified problems with the program. But Google denied such a request was ever made.
“Despite the company’s earlier request and the confusion caused by Googlebot and Google News earlier this week, we believe that Googlebot continues to misclassify stories,” Tribune said.
by Depression Cure
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by Filtering Software
How unfortunate for United Airlines - and for anyone who quickly dumped their stock when they heard of the news.
I guess the only winners were the people who jumped on the low stock price while it was still down.
Thanks for sharing this - it’s really an interesting bit of “new”(s).
-J
by John @ WebsiteBuildingBiz
I don’t see how they can really fault Google. That bot may not be perfect but it sure does an incredible job of organizing the vast amounts of information on the internet.
Anyway, how could it be Google’s fault if some careless investors jumped on a bandwagon without even checking the date on their news source? That doesn’t sound like a very sound financial plan.
by search engine optimization
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by Great Wall of China
I cant believe that kind of error happened. They should sue Google for all they are worth.
by jj
airline stocks are so dangerous anyway - investing in them is gambling.
by iPod, Web, How to, Internet, Computer, Free Software, Tips, Make Money Online with AhTim
Google Old News cause Big Trouble !!…
A big big mistake! Google News crawled an old news “Bankruptcy of United Airlines” in year 2002 as today’s news and cause serious stock market evaporate.
This old story was first hit its popularity in South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspa…
by Voos Baratos
You can’t blame the Googlebot for that… It was the journalist who “bumped” the story. But even so… selling stocks because of one article is ridiculous. Imagine what you can do if you fake a few articles…
by Debt Relief
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by insurance quote tips
airline stocks are so dangerous, so must investing them earlier. hope find good solutions.
by GPS
Shocking! We are constantly reminded the dangers of automation - googlebot could potential send a company over the edge. Wow, thanks for this, really interesting.