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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.
I cannot see any way that someone could make a defensible argument for a University forcing its students to use a particular search engine. It's just braindead. When the person making the decision is a director of (or anyone with a significant stake in) the company benefitting, it goes beyond being stupid and irresponsible and becomes corrupt.
How does IU pull this off, anyway? Do they actually block Google, Yahoo, etc?
How were they forced? There are so many search engines out there, it's hard to imagine blocking *all* of them and *all* the proxies you could use to get to them.
TFA doesn't explain. Something doesn't add up.
I don't get this kind of post. It seems to be saying "big deal, everybody does that, why did this even get posted?"
While I'm not surprised at all this sort of thing happens this IMO doesn't mean it shouldn't be reported on. Maybe then it'll happen a bit less often.
Yeah, why name it something moronic like "Cha Cha" when you could name it something sophisticated and professional like "Yahoo!" or "Google".
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"