Automated News Crawling Evaporates $1.14B 546
cmd writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that Google News crawled an obscure reprint of an article from 2002 when United Airlines was on the brink of bankruptcy. United Airlines has since recovered but due to a missing dateline, Google News ran the story as today's news. The story was then picked up by other news aggregators and eventually headlined as a news flash on Bloomberg. This triggered automated trading programs to dump UAL, cratering the stock from $12 to $3 and evaporating 1.14 billion dollars (nearly United's total market cap today) in shareholder wealth. The stock recovered within the day to $10 and is now trading at $9.62, a market cap of $300M less than before Google ran the story." The article makes clear that Google's news bot only noticed the old story because it has been voted up in popularity on the site of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper. The original thought was that stock manipulation may have been behind the incident, but this suspicion seems to be fading.
BEHOLD.... (Score:5, Funny)
... the power of the GOOG!!
Next time... (Score:5, Funny)
This is too awesome (Score:5, Funny)
I love Google.
big bad bot battle (Score:5, Funny)
So the NewsBots trick the TradeBots, and we humans are left on the sidelines, hoping that we don't get squished in the process.
Sounds like a sad Transformers sequel.
Corrections (Score:4, Funny)
"Google regrets the error." What, it always works for the New York Times!
Maybe (Score:2, Funny)
It's because google is going to launch their own airline [gmailtools.com].
that'll teach you. (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm sorry, Mr. Schmidt. Your flight has been delayed by two hours."
"Son of a... do you people know who I am? Dammit, get Brin on the phone."
Makes my mistakes look small (Score:3, Funny)
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:5, Funny)
The story begins in the summer of 1995 when a Standford graduate student finds himself -- without a suitcase -- pacing back in forth in front of an empty United baggage carousel at 4 AM. ....
That graduate student's name: Sergey Brin.
And, now you know "the rest of the story".
With apologies to Casey Kasem.
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What if Google evaporates itself? (Score:3, Funny)
Altavista.... BAY-BEEEEEEEE!
Maybe their own airline? (Score:3, Funny)
"It's because Google is going to launch their own airline."
Yeah, they'll call it "United Airlines BETA".
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:5, Funny)
I can see the GNews developer in his cubicle... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:big bad bot battle (Score:2, Funny)
No, wait, I welcome our new TradeBots overlords...
Yikes, who am I supposed to welcome? I welcome our new CowboyNealBots!
Evaporated wealth? (Score:5, Funny)
First of all, this is fucking hilarious. Anyone with "computers that robotically [sic] troll the Web for news stories and execute stock trades automatically" deserves to reap the consequences of turning their destiny over to a computer.
Second, I doubt that any capitol was destroyed by this. Wealth didn't "evaporate," it merely moved from stupid people to smarter people.
I only wish I were one of the smarter people, who bought some stock worth $12 for $3. I should write a program to watch for that sort of thing happening, and then automatically buy-- oh wait.
Re:Artificial Intelligence vs Natural Stupidity (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Holy crap. (Score:3, Funny)
Plenty of people think they're investing in individual stocks: they research the company, buy stock, and hold it for many years. I agree with you: they're fooling themselves.
Re:big bad bot battle (Score:2, Funny)
Question my sanity all you want, but I think Shia LaBeouf's acting is damn fine!
Shia is the hot chick right? ...
Re:Hello? Is this thing on? (Score:3, Funny)
Or is SkyNet just fucking with us now?
Yes, I am.
I mean, yes, it is.
Re:Holy crap. (Score:5, Funny)
An automated submission editor would notice that the same story had been posted previously, so it would take about two days before someone realized the bots were running the show.
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:5, Funny)
The article makes clear that Google's news bot only noticed the old story because it has been voted up in popularity on the site of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
Hmmm... Quick! Everybody click this link! [forbes.com]
Buy and Hold vs. Bankruptcy Announcement (Score:3, Funny)
"Buy and Hold" is generally good, but if the stock's going bankrupt, holding it any longer isn't going to do you much good. You've got to know when to fold them.
(I once used a similar technique back during the Boom&Crash years, called "Wasn't paying attention that month", which cost me most of the value of a stock I held too much of - it went from ~60 to ~3, and never recovered past about ~5.)
Re:And again Google gets a free pass. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Holy crap. (Score:4, Funny)
I want to be your friend, how do I start?
Re:BEHOLD.... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeesh! It doesn't seem to have worked.
So what happens to all those people that ... (Score:4, Funny)
... bought UAL stock at just $3? Oh wait.