Tuesday, January 08, 2008

ChaCha: The little search engine that might...



[from Chicago Tribune...]

When you think Internet innovation, a shopping mall in the Indianapolis suburbs is not the first place that comes to mind.

But in just such a spot -- in a storefront that might, in other circumstances, have held a Talbot's -- a team of engineers and developers is trying to take on Google with a search engine that relies on people, rather than automated computer probes, to provide results.

The idea is that one expert human "guide," working freelance for ChaCha, can home in on what another person wants with more efficiency than a search engine and its blunderbuss of 7 million results per query.

The company employs about 55 people in the upscale Clay Terrace shopping mall in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis where company co-founder and CEO Scott Jones, a civically active maverick who spearheaded Indiana's move to adopt daylight-saving time, also lives.

[full article at Chicago Tribute]

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