Software

Images: Life without Google: ChaCha bets on people power

By // July 9, 2007, 7:26 AM PST

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  • ChaCha counts on guides

    ChaCha is a meta search engine that offers a unique twist--it has guides that can help you find information via live chat. It's a worthy stopover in the Life without Google experiment.

  • The initial results

    To test out the people aspect of the search, which is really the main selling point, I picked a topic that wasn't way difficult but not easy either. My mission: Find blog posts related to Andrew Morton, a Linux programmer at Google. Here's my search.

  • Asking for help

    After being asked whether I wanted some human help I decided to proceed.

  • Chat session

    These human results aren't instant, which can be a problem is you're impatient.

  • Patience

    The chat session tells me to keep my patience as Ryan a guide looks for the goods. He also asks questions to refine the search.

  • Delivering results

    Ryan turns up a result that wasn't perfect, but was something I wouldn't have found on my own. You can also rate the guide.

  • Video results

    A look at the video results on a search for Andrew Morton. Four results were relevant from what I can tell. Others less so. I found the video wall on the right way annoying.

  • News results lacking

    The news results were functional, but I found the presentation a bit lacking. It would be helpful if things were grouped together better. Here's a search on AMD's benchmarking issues

  • Audio search

    The audio search was also an interesting twist. You can also play the audio right from your browser. One gripe: Dates weren't given so the only way to know the podcast date is to click. You may get an old podcast as I did.

ChaCha counts on guides

ChaCha is a meta search engine that offers a unique twist--it has guides that can help you find information via live chat. It's a worthy stopover in the Life without Google experiment.

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By Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of TechRepublic.