Google Inc. blamed financial printing company R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. for the premature release of results that showed a profit shortfall, caused shares to plunge and made Chief Executive Officer Larry Page the brunt of jokes shared widely on Twitter Inc.

The company's third-quarter results were filed with regulators and made available to news wires with a placeholder for a quote from Page at about 12:30 p.m. in New York. R.R. Donnelley had filed a draft of the document without authorization, Google later said on its blog.

The timing raised concerns about Google's ability to release sensitive financial data through proper channels, said David Larcker, a corporate governance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before trading was halted, a 9 percent drop in Google shares wiped more than $22 billion from its market capitalization in minutes.

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