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Google app bug cancels Christmas, December

The People app in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean leaves out the last month of the year, taking users from November straight to January.

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Steven Musil is a senior news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers and had a brief stint at MacWeek.
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The People app in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean jumps from November to January. Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

Is Google the new Grinch who stole Christmas?

Sure, the month of December can be expensive and stressful, but Google apparently has an app for avoiding it. Users of Google's recently released Android 4.2 Jelly Bean are finding that the Web giant left the last month of year out of the operating system's People app.

Users attempting to add a friend's birthday using the "date picker" feature will scroll right from November to January.

The bug appears contained to the People app and does not affect Android's Calendar app. And on a Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.2, both of whose People apps failed to show November, the utility to set the system date showed December correctly, too.

CNET has contacted Google for comment and will update this report when we learn more.

Thanks to platform fragmentation, not many people are yet using the newest version of the operating system, which was released early last week.

However, it's likely that Google will release an update quickly -- before all the Whos down in Whoville all cry Boo Hoo.