Earlier today, the Dow Jones newswire service fell victim to what is being called a “technical error”.
In this instance, that means their newswire service fell for a pretty obvious case of fake news.
Between 9.34am and 9.36am ET, the Dow Jones newswire released a series of headlines claiming that software giant Google purchased Apple for a reported $9 billion in a deal initiated between Google boss Larry Page and Apple creator Steve Jobs back in 2010.
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Initial reports claimed that the fake news story even had a brief effect on the stock prices of both Google and Apple. However given the unrealistic nature of the news the stock prices soon returned to normal. It’s unlikely that many people in the world of stock trading and investment would have fallen for such a story – Apple’s worth is estimated to be around 50-100 times the $9 billion price tag in the fake story.
The fake news story even claimed that Google staff would soon be taking over Apple HQ and would receive 9 shares in Apple stock for each share they have in Google stock.
The fake news story was available to thousands of journalists and bloggers.
Dow Jones soon removed the fake headlines from their service and released the following statement –
Please disregard the headlines that ran on Dow Jones Newswires between 9:34 a.m. ET and 9:36 a.m. ET. Due to a technical error, the headlines were published. All of those headlines are being removed from the wires. We apologize for the error.
