Internet-fueled Panic Rocks United Stock

A nearly- 6-year-old article circulating on the Internet as breaking news caused a brief 75 percent drop in United's stock Monday, highlighting a potential peril about how information travels in the modern world. The steep sell-off in United's shares came after a news service in Florida distributed an old story posted on the South Florida Sun Sentinel Web site six years ago. The story was distributed by Income Securities Advisors to a market information site operated by Bloomberg. The story made it appear that United had filed for bankrupcy protection again. The original story was first published by the Chicago tribune on Dec 10, 2002. Tribune Co., the owner of the Sun-Sentinel, initially pointed a finger at Google, saying it appeared that the search engine highlighted the story out of the Sun-Sentinel's archives over the weekend, which generated traffic and caused the newspaper's computer to move the story to a page of most-viewed articles. But Google said the only reason its search engine "crawler" bothered with the story was that it was listed on the Sun-Sentinel page of most-viewed stories -- and with the weekend date on it, instead of the 2002 date. To the crawler, "it was a new item that said, 'Hey, look here,' " Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said.