Some headlines are just too good to pass up, and this is one of them. According to reports it would appear that an iffy Google News search was responsible for stock in United Airlines to crash. And crash is a pretty good description as the stock plummeted by 75 percent, down from $12.30 to less than $3 at one point.
So how was Google News to blame for all this? Well it seems that the South Florida-based Income Securities Advisors service did a Google News search and stumbled across a Chicago Tribune story that United Airlines had filed for bankruptcy.
The story was quickly filed into the news digest for the day and, of course, the news spread.
Unfortunately, the story found on Google News was actually from 2002. United Airlines came out of bankruptcy in 2006.
The airline issued a press release, the stock climbed back, and the Chicago Tribune deleted the story from its archives just in case...