Google shares were suspended for more than two hours Thursday after an erroneous early release of its disappointing third quarter results shocked the market and sent the Internet giant’s stock price tumbling. The figures were made public in a regulatory filing hours ahead of their scheduled publication, which Google called a “draft” released by a printer “without authorization.” The final version came a few hours later, with the same numbers but with a comment from chief executive Larry Page in place of a line on the draft which said, “PENDING LARRY QUOTE.” “We had a strong quarter,” Page said in the statement. But the numbers told a slightly different story. Net profit was reported at $2.18 billion, down 20 percent from $2.73 billion in the same period a year ago. Google stock slid 8.0 percent to end at $695, taking the company’s market value back down below that of Microsoft, which it overtook earlier this month as the number two player in the tech sector behind Apple.
