If you search the word “boondoggle,” Google won't send you to its investor relations page. But after a prematurely released earnings statement was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, maybe it should.

The headline-grabbing mistake should serve as a cautionary lesson in an age of electronic filings and the hair-trigger traders who pounce on them.

Google was quick to point a finger at R.R. Donnelley, claiming the publisher and filing agent published the draft 8-K earnings statement and press release on the SEC's EDGAR database “without authorization” hours before a planned call with investors after the closing bell.

When trading of Google's stock on NASDAQ was temporarily halted in response to the errant filing at 12:50 p.m., it was down $68.19 per share, roughly 9%. There was also the cringe-worthy inclusion in the 8-K of "PENDING LARRY QUOTE" in the place where a comment from CEO Larry Page had yet to be inserted.

Google amended its filing with a Form 8-K/A that “corrects and supersedes the prior Form 8-K filed earlier this morning.” The financial results reported in the prior Form 8-K did not change.

RR Donnelly shares also took a hit on Thursday as news leaked out. Adding insult to injury is advice (and marketing) the firm offers through “Frequently Asked Questions” posted on its website:

“Can I file on my own? Yes… [But] EDGAR is a complex system and that's why we recommend using a financial printer such as RR Donnelley.”

It wasn't “complexity” that seems to have caused the problem. It was, it appears, old-fashioned human error, coupled with a lack (or bypassing) of protocol.

The SEC's advice regarding filings is pretty easy to sum up: get it right or suffer the consequences. Even if there is a material misstatement there's little any company can do. The SEC's EDGAR Filer Manual makes it clear that even a mistakenly made filing is immediately posted and disseminated. “A filer that has made a filing with incorrect information in the text of the filing may choose to amend that filing to correct the information or to re-file the document with the correct information,” it says. Only under “very rare and unusual circumstances,” will the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance staff consider an “extraordinary request” to delete a filing from the EDGAR system.

Guidance from the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance gives additional insight into the protections companies should follow, including proper control of access codes.

Among the five codes used by EDGAR filers is the CCC (CIK Confirmation Code), used to verify identity. “If a filer gives this code to a filing agent so that agent can make a filing on its behalf, the filer should consider changing the code after the agent makes the filing,” the Division advises, “to prevent [it] from inadvertently making unauthorized filings.”

A password, used in conjunction with a CIK code to update filer information, should also be closely controlled, with access restricted to “only a limited number of trusted filer employees.” A filing agent does not need this code to make a filing on the filer's behalf, and should use its own access codes to login to the EDGAR system.

We are in an age where high-frequency trading platforms can sink a stock in the blink of an eye and “fat-finger” mistakes can lead to a market-wide “flash crash.” The SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission have been reviewing ways to protect against technological mishaps, such as a software glitch by Knight Capital that triggered a flash crash and another, earlier this month, which forced NASDAQ to cancel Kraft Foods trades when shares inexplicably spiked nearly 30%. CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton recently proposed increasing penalties for high-speed trading infractions to $140,000 in fines per second.

There is a need, however, to worry just as much about preventable human mistakes that also harm investors (Google's drop hurt its own shareholders while also dragging down the entire tech sector) and attract regulatory scrutiny. Did Google have a required, adequate review process and sign-off protocol for its outsourced EGAR filings? We'll soon find out, but it is a question other companies need to ask themselves, before someone else does.