You already know about “Bots Gone Bad”— the episode where a Google “bot” crawling the Internet found a 2002 story about United Airlines declaring bankruptcy, somehow erroneously concluded it was a current story, and added it to Google News. The 2002 story was ultimately sent out with a fresh date by Bloomberg on September 8, leading to an immediate and massive sell-off of UAL stock that temporarily knocked a billion dollars off of the company’s market cap.
Well, less than two weeks later, I may have stumbled upon “Bots Gone Bad, Part II,” or at the very least some similar-looking human mischief. The story starts with one of the many key word searches/feeds that I have set up to alert me to new securities developments. On September 19, 2008, I was interested to see a “hit” dated that same day on Google News for an article entitled “People to watch in the new Congress.” The blurb for the article, which Google News showed as dated September 19, read “Cox’s bill would require an investor to hold at least a 1-percent stake in a security before filing suit.” (Click on the screenshot below to see what I saw):
