By Sumner Lemon and James Niccolai, IDG News Service September 11, 2008
Google is to blame for publishing a six-year-old news story that caused the stock of UAL, the parent company of United Airlines, to drop sharply on Monday, the Tribune said in a statement.
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.
Googlebot blamed for United stock crash |