Google Buying Apple? False $9 Billion Acquisition Story Was 'Technical Error'

The Dow Jones said a “technical error” led the newswire to publish false headlines on Tuesday morning that said Google was buying Apple.

The wrong headlines were first reported on Twitter and 9to5Mac. The fake published stories made it seem like Dow Jones had been hacked since it included titles like: “Google Says Yay,” “Google Says Steve Jobs Suggested This In His Will,” “Google Will Takeover Apple Headquarters” and “Google Says Deal Expected To Close Tomorrow.”

“In a surprise move to everyone who is alive, Google said it’s going to buy Apple for $9 billion,” the false story began. The number should have been the first of many red flags to this story since Apple has a market value of more than $800 billion. Analysts also predicted this summer Apple could become a trillion dollar company by next year.

The good thing is that the fake story didn’t highly impact the stock market.

The fabricated story then went on to say Larry Page talked to Steve Jobs about the deal in 2010 and that it was announced when Jobs' will was read in Cupertino, Calif.

Besides the Google-Apple story, the newswire published other erroneous headlines as well, like “Headline 3 For Reporter’s Story” and “Practice Headline 3 Still on Wednesday.”

At first it was believed Dow Jones had been hacked, but the newswire released a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying it was an error and that the stories were being taken down.

Dow Jones said:

“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.”