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IU's Choice of Search Engine ChaCha "Explained"
theodp sends a follow-up to the discussion here a couple of months back about Indiana University librarians and students being forced to use the 'human-powered' ChaCha search engine because IU's President and one of its Trustees were business buddies of ChaCha CEO (and IU alum) Scott Jones. Don't be ridiculous, insisted indignant IU officials. It was ChaCha's ability to fill in gaps in a speech he was writing in 2007 that convinced IU's CIO that the University had to do a deal with ChaCha. What a coincidence, notes Valleywag. The need to fill in gaps in a speech he was writing back in 2005 is what convinced ChaCha CEO Jones that he had to create ChaCha in the first place. Way to anticipate what your customers need before they do.
Welcome to the world of the modern CEO (which the president of a university effectively is). Other's time is worth nothing compared to your time - both figuratively and nearly literally for some CEOs. Sadly, it probably wasn't even a good speech - they rarely are.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just a guess: If you currently do a search at the University of Indiana, the results are Powered by Google Search Appliance. Sounds like they'll switch to ChaCha for intranet searching.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
No, when you search there are a few different engines listed with radio buttons to choose. ChaCha is selected by default. Google is right next to it.
This guy is so bad that he wastes HOURS of other people's time on researching his speech.
So that would immediately call into question any of his decisions. He is not capable of determining whether ChaCha is better than Google (or better than just looking it up in the library yourself).
Obligatory car analogy -
If you never drive a car, are you capable of saying Car A is better than Car B based solely upon how fast someone else can pick up your laundry in it?
I work At IU, it is actually just replacing the search engine on the site www.iu.edu, it was/is google. No one is being forced at all to use it, in fact most users have google for their homepage. Now they can use a special version of cha cha on the IU homepage that is supported by the Library staff and lab consultants. It will also give special access to the library's periodicals and other online documents if a student is logged in. To be honest I think they will still be using google hardware for some searches.
Mod parent up. This is just IU using Chacha to power its own internal search portal, and forcing its employees to be unpaid volunteers for Chacha. Nobody's stopping students from using GOOG or anything else for their general web searches. RTFPR for more info.
I still think it's boneheaded and a conflict of interest, but let's not exaggerate it into something it's not. Oh wait, this is Slashdot, never mind.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I ran a search for "serving ferrets", when asked if I needed feeding them, I responded with "not so much" and had my session ended by the ChaCha Guide almost instantly.