Probe into how Google mix-up caused $1 billion run on United
"The comedy of errors began with just one reader who went to the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s website and viewed a 2002 article on United Airlines’ bankruptcy.
That single visit in the early hours of Sunday morning, a period of low traffic, apparently bumped it into a 'Popular Stories' in the business section.
At 1:37am, an electronic Google program swept through the paper’s website for new stories and spotted the link.
Google says its program scanned the piece and, seeing there was no 2002 dateline, indexed the article for inclusion on its news pages.
Three minutes and two seconds later, Google News readers started viewing the story on the Sun Sentinel’s Web site."
This is either a miserably written article (duh!) or more likely a Google employee who found a way to take the date tag off the United story.
Lots more to come on this scam......pity the poor investing friends/family of those Google workers who had the ability to de/re-tag posts.
bummer dudes!
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