Apparently more than a few traders had heart palpitations today. As the market closed, Google’s share price appeared to fall apart, falling to $200 from an opening price of $396. At least that’s what the Nasdaq ticker showed.

That was $62 billion in market cap that was zapped away in the last four minutes before the fiscal quarter ended and the markets closed, and it was automatically reported by Google Finance and other sites (the comments here on MarketWatch’s uncorrected article show how freaked out some people were).

And the “drop” came as the markets surged on news that the bailout was still in play and mark-to-market rules were suspended (allowing banks to stay solvent). So what happened?

“It was a data glitch, which is extremely rare” said one hedge fund guy I know. “But yeah, for a second we freaked out.” In after hours trading Google is back to normal, trading at $407.

[Sourced Via Techcrunch]