Bite - possibly the worst spinners on the planet
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Google downs airline
UNITED AIRLINES' share price went tumbling when a quirk of Google recycled an ancient story about it going bankrupt.
United had filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, but a link to an old story about the bankruptcy filing re-appeared on the South Florida Sun Sentinel's Web site.
The Sun Sentinel said that the 2002 United bankruptcy story in the paper's archive got enough Internet traffic early Sunday morning to push it into the "Popular Business Stories: Most Viewed" section of the paper's Web site.
A spokesman said the story was not republished, and the Internet link was simply a link to the old version of the story in a new one.
However Google's software didn’t realise that and a link to the story went on Google News.
From there it was picked up by a Florida investment firm, Income Securities Advisors, which posted a summary on the Bloomberg financial information service.
When it was seen by thousands of investment managers and traders who failed to check the date on the original story the share price went into freefall.
UAL shares got as low as $3 from $12 before trading was halted. µ
L'Inq
AP
Tags: Google
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Why is this google's fault. Its the fault that posted it on boomburg and those that read it from there.

I wonder how many jammy geeks noticed this and bought UAL shares while they were sitting at $3 for the wrong reasons.. <3

Hmm, that said, I wonder how many UAL shares Google bought yesterday.. <_<
our economy was based upon more than the confidence of a few thousand idiots?
...I would have understood if a few fell for the old article, but so many that the stock prices went down like this - I rest my case.