Yesterday had to be a tense day to work at Apple. While the news side of things was blisteringly slow at the start of the day, a little story on Engadget changed all that fairly quickly.
The story was posted at 11:49 am, and Apple stock immediately took nose dive…going from $107.89 to $103.42 in six minutes (11:56 – 12:02). That wiped over $4 billion off of Apple’s market capitalization.
The stock mostly recovered after Engadget posted an update revealing the the information was, in fact, a hoax. Apple quickly tried to set things straight by saying “This communication is fake and did not come from Apple. Apple is on track to ship iPhone in late June and Mac OS X Leopard in October.â€
Lawsuits and criminal investigations are sure to ensue any second now. If what Engadget says is true, and the information was from an internal email at Apple that was sent out maliciously (apparently), then I think Engadget is in the clear on this…but you know, somewhere a gaggle of lawyers are smiling now, because some idiot thought this would be funny.
Some heads are definitely going to roll for this, boy oh boy.
@Chris
No doubt. You can’t just let something like this go. I just wonder how it happened.
I dunno. I think that Engadget is at risk for a lawsuit. They posted a story without checking the sources and cause the stock to plummet. That’s dangerous…
Piko
Engadget would be wise to keep their asses out of the rumor biz and stick to reporting on cold hard facts. If a rumor site wants to post this nonsense, then have at it…Would that fit under defamation, slander or libel?