Google is to blame for publishing a six-year-old news story that caused the stock of 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, Florida, 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. "Google provided a link to the old story on Google News and dated it September 6, 2008. Google's dating the story on Google News made it appear current to Google News users," Tribune said in a statement. The appearance of the bankruptcy story on Google News was blamed for a steep drop in UAL's stock price, leading the airline to issue a clarification.Infoworld.com
That is brutal on Google's part. Sure it was probably all done automatically with bots/spiders, but that shows how sloppy Google can be. I wouldn't be surprised if the airline sued Google.
It wouldn't necessarily be the airline that sued but all the stock traders who got owned when their automated stock-loss systems also fired automatically when the stock dropped. I'm sure some people lost money that day that aren't happy.
That's really awful for the UAL, hope google do some appropriate action regarding this case favorable to UAL.