Google News has stopped linking to a press release site after a teenager abused the service to spread a false press release about the search giant.
The I-Newswire service offers free distribution of press releases to organisations and individuals.
Professional PR wire services charge a fee for news distribution. The releases are used by investors and the press, and are indexed by Google News.
But blogger Richard Wiggins found out that the I-Newswire system could easily be abused to send irrelevant and incorrect statements.
"Once word gets out on this, I can imagine lots of bloggers submitting 'press releases' with their daily blog entries, enhancing their visibility by spamming Google News," the blogger noted.
This prompted 16 year-old blogger Tom Vendetta to send out a fake press release announcing that he was hired by Google to fix a security vulnerability in the Gmail service.
The spoof received wide attention in the blogosphere. Vendetta has since apologised.
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