Dow Jones Published Fake News About Google Buying Apple For $9 Billion, Proves Bots Are Stupid

When a respected institution like Dow Jones publishes something on its newswire, it’s only natural that there would be a notable response. As such, when headlines of Google’s acquisition of Apple for $9 billion following the will of the late Steve Jobs was posted by the company, it caused a maelstrom of activity. Unfortunately, this turned out to be fake news, as was obvious to anyone who read the article.

The first to report on the development was 9to5Mac, which noted how a technical error led to the spread of news that was embarrassingly fake. The articles claimed that Jobs had said in his will that he wanted Google to buy his company after his death and that the deal would be for significantly less than what Apple was worth.

To anyone who knows anything about both companies, that $9 billion number is a clear sign that there was something significantly wrong with the articles. However, this didn’t stop Apple’s stock from reaching $158. Dow Jones issued a statement to the publication, telling 9to5Mac and everyone else to disregard the news.

“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,” the company’s statement reads.

Apple’s share prices have since dropped to marginally normal levels, but it is quite telling how fast it took from when the fake news was published and when the stock prices rose. As TechCrunch notes, the development is indicative of how unreliable algorithms can be when it comes to situations with more complexity than a few short-tail events. In essence, the stock market is flooded with bots equipped with the intelligence of apes.