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.

Comments

what's the suprise?

[tfiedler]

Why is this kind of behavior a suprise to anyone? It happens in every business, big or small, for profit and non-profit, and today, colleges are nothing more than big businesses driven by athletics. Its typical hypocricy, all the while the executives spout off about ethics they openly ignore them. The moral of this is to never believe a thing that rolls downhill, whether from executives, politicians, rock stars or otherwise; and instead to remember that the basic truth is that the importance of adherence to lofty ethics for the most part, is dependent upon who you are.

What the ... ?

[khasim]

He was impressed when IU's Ask a Librarian service found the quote, from former Harvard President James Bryant Conant, within hours. But a ChaCha guide got it in two minutes.

"Hours".

So he wasted at least TWO HOURS of someone's time looking up a quote? For a SPEECH? And then he asked a DIFFERENT person to look it up, also?

It's a blatant conflict of interest

[postbigbang]

McRobbie should have been eliminated from his assension to IU president, which happens on Oct 18, for tepid ethics.

Whatever the quality of ChaCha, it's not right for him to be on their board, then use IU student resources as well as IU assets to forward this. Jones, inventor of voice mail, needs no free ride from anyone.

Indiana politics smells as bad as politics anywhere, but this is far too close of a relationship, and McRobbie sees nothing wrong with his forceful advocacy of ChaCha. Sure, you can use google or anything you want. But using university resources towards personal profit in this way is onerous and not transparent.