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.

Re:what's the suprise?

[DaleGlass]

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.

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?

Re:What the ... ?

[Overzeetop]

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.

What!?

[KEnderK]

I thought ChaCha's only reason to exist was so you could abuse the people who help you search!

Conflict of Interest

[Pantero Blanco]

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?

Re:Conflict of Interest

[larry bagina]

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.

Re:Conflict of Interest

[Loadmaster]

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.

Re:Conflict of Interest

[coolate]

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.

Re:Conflict of Interest

[xigxag]

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.

That's the point. The waste.

[khasim]

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?

Ah-ha!

[mooreti1]

I was wondering where Jeeve's went after leaving Ask. Apparently he changed his freakin' name to ChaCha.

Re:All the silly names made me laugh

[Scutter]

Yeah, why name it something moronic like "Cha Cha" when you could name it something sophisticated and professional like "Yahoo!" or "Google".

Re:All the silly names made me laugh

[3vi1]

I don't see what's so silly about it. My friend Joanie loves Cha Cha.

Thank god for Google - I had no idea how to spell Joanie.

-J

Re:clock is running -- Can SlashCha beat ChaCha?

[notshannon]

15 minutes -- "Chat session ended" -- zero search results
on qalqashandi sub al-a'sha manuscript location

Cairo, Egypt would be a good start.
(If you know what library, please reply; thanks!)

twilight zone

[Digitus1337]

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.

Re:"Way to anticipate what your customers need"

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Way to add distracting snark. Face it, you're not John Stewart."

Well, to be fair, Jon Stewart's not even John Stewart!

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.

Re:"Way to anticipate what your customers need"

[UbuntuDupe]

Joke's on you -- you probably only caught that mistake because of the amazing power of ChaCha.