“FAKE NEWS!” was called out across the web as the Dow Jones newswire service had a bit of a ‘technical error’. It falsely reported that Google was set to buy Apple for the rather paltry fee of $9 billion. The New York Times reports that the story was sent out erroneously, having been part of a training programme that never should have been released. The mistake was soon corrected, after a brief jump in the Apple stock price. Dow Jones apologised for the mistake, albeit not before causing a couple of chuckles.

$GOOG $AAPL by Dow Jones... I guess you guys have some explaining to do pic.twitter.com/402KaCcQJz

— Trader 53 (@trader_53) October 10, 2017

It was clear from the style of the piece that it had to be taken with a pinch of salt, since the purchase was a “surprise move to everyone who is alive”. It further claimed that Larry Page was in negotiation with Steve Jobs before his death, with the deal announced in Jobs’ will. Google employees would move to Apple’s beautiful new headquarters in Cupertino, with their response being a simple, “Yay”.

In a more straightforward statement, Dow Jones noted the following:

“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.”