Tribune and Google Duke It Out

You may have heard by now: an automated Google program (aka, a "bot") is catching blame for a major Web glitch connected to a Tribune Website that caused a big airline's stock to tank this week.

(Aside: I bet that poor, dumped-on Google bot is now wishing it was in a union. Hehe.)

The back story: Google News plucked an old report about United Airlines declaring bankruptcy in 2002 off the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's Website -- and then disseminated it as new news in 2008.

Shares of UAL plummeted (check out the scary drop here -- via Google Finance no less!) because the story spread all over the world through Google News on Monday. The Wall Street Journal covers the headache with this latest dispatch. Here's the interesting back-n-forth between Tribune and Google in the WSJ article:

Tribune said it previously had identified problems with Google's automated search service and had asked Google to stop trolling Tribune Web sites for inclusion in Google News.

"Despite the company's earlier request and the confusion caused by Googlebot and Google News earlier this week, we believe that Googlebot continues to misclassify stories," Tribune said.

Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said in a statement: "The claim that the Tribune Company asked Google to stop crawling its newspaper Web sites is untrue."

Tribune said it can back up the claims in its statement.

The story even got picked up by Bloomberg news service.

Interestingly, the LA Times has a more detailed story about how the snafu happened (Yay LAT!). And it makes one wonder some more about where the original problem and blame may lie. See the story here.

Again, what an unfortunate headache for everyone. Maybe a few real people are still kinda/sorta/maybe still necessary for putting out the news.

P.S. One thing we don't understand is how a six-year old story on a Tribune website can still be available to the public when it's generally the policy of its Websites to lock the stories behind a paid archive system two weeks after they're published. How is this full story even still available for free on the Sun-Sentinel's Website?

This web stuff.... sheesh. It's confusing, I know.

UPDATE: Just a thought -- Maybe Google will use this as a teachable moment and hire, oh, about 2,000 unemployed reporters and editors to help make sure the integrity of their news dissemination service isn't compromised.