UAL’s stock quickly witnessed a deficit of $1.14 billion as a result of the news, but by the end of the day had mostly recovered. The resulting loss in shareholder value was ~ $300 million. Of course, had the original article included the publication date (2002), this likely wouldn’t have happened. The investigators believe this was an innocuous event, but it’s very easy to imagine a similar case as a malicious event. Industry competition, rogue employees, or other nefarious parties could conspire to hijack another company’s stock or reputation (which has a strong correlation to stock price).

It’s not clear that much can be done to mitigate this form of social engineering. Once a news blurb gains traction, it circulates the various blogging networks, online media conglomerates, and aggregators like Google News. One way to attempt to contain an inaccurate story is to issue an official company press release stating the news is inaccurate or misleading. This, however, may appear unconvincing to many, eager to trust third-party reportings over the official party line.

Another interesting facet is in assigning blame. Is it Google’s crawlers’ fault for not being able to distinguish old news from current? Or perhaps Tribune is at fault: its online paper South Florida Sun-Sentinel published the old article without a date. Stockholders (and automated software acting on their behalf) selling their shares based on the news are also potentially to blame for not researching the news with due diligence prior to acting on it.