Tribune blames Google for UAL bankruptcy story

NEW YORK, USA: Tribune Co on Wednesday blamed technology owned by search engine company Google Inc for treating an outdated story about UAL Corp's bankruptcy as current, breaking news.

Tribune said in a press release it had identified problems with Google's ‘Googlebot’ technology months ago and asked the company to stop using it to ‘crawl’ for stories on its website.

The Chicago-based publisher said it believes Google continued using the technology to identify stories and make them available as search results on its Google News site, and that Google continues to misclassify stories.

A 2002 Chicago Tribune story about the airline UAL declaring bankruptcy caused the company's stock to lose nearly all of its value after an investment firm posted it on the Bloomberg financial news service on Monday.

The story appeared over the weekend on an inner page of the website of Tribune's South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale. Google News then featured it in its search results, where it was discovered by Miami Lakes, Florida,-based investment firm Income Securities Advisers.

A spokesman for Google was not immediately available for comment.