The new year began with confusion concerning the Polish currency – the exchange rate of the Polish zloty fell dramatically. Fortunately, it turned out to be just a Google search engine error. Information about the error was confirmed by Finance Minister Andrzej Domański, and on Tuesday the ministry called on the US giant to provide an explanation.

The Ministry of Finance has formally requested information from Google Poland about the reasons for yesterday’s false publication regarding the zloty exchange rate and what actions it will take to avoid similar situations in the future.

In response, Google’s Polish subsidiary announced that it had temporarily disabled the exchange rate display function and apologised for the situation.

“Google does not verify data from suppliers, does not interfere with its content and cannot guarantee that the exchange rates presented are up-to-date, and the data is displayed as it was provided. Google Poland assures that if errors are reported, it contacts the data provider to correct them as soon as possible”, reads a Twitter post posted in response to the finance ministry.

On Monday, the exchange rate of the euro against the PLN on the Google Finance website was around PLN 4.35. This was the case until 5 pm – then it began to rise rapidly. By the evening, it was already over PLN 5 and had risen by a total of a PLN for several hours. At this time, the stock exchange trade services were showing the correct EUR/PLN exchange rate – around PLN 4.34-4.346. Speculation about the zloty was swiftly cut short by Finance Minister Andrzej Domański.

“Calmly. This exchange rate of the zloty, which sows panic, is a “fake” (error of the data source). In a moment the markets in Asia will open and the situation will return to normal. On Bloomberg, the situation looks like this”, tweeted the Finance Minister and attached a graph to the post showing a rate of 4.34 PLN per euro.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński