Penn Web site gets new search engine

Visitors to the University's homepage may have noticed something new -- the option to search www.upenn.edu with Google. Previously, Internet users were only able to search the site with AltaVista, but now they can pick either engine. According to University computing officials, the change is in response to student demands for Google. "We're providing a link to Google because our users have asked for it," said Randall Couch, of the Information Systems and Computing Communications Group. "It would be a disservice not to respond to that concern." The default search technology, licensed from AltaVista, is under the University's control. The new option makes use of an index Google compiled by searching Penn pages and provides to the University free of charge. "We don't have control over how often [the index] is updated or how complete it is," Couch said. According to Couch, the University was in negotiations with Google for a more customized search, but the price tag -- hundreds of thousands of dollars per year -- seemed an unwise use of University funds. "We would've preferred to do something with a tighter linkage with them," Couch said. "This is the closest thing we could find to a win-win situation." Google has indexed the sites of hundreds of universities, both American and foreign, for its University Search service. While the basic service is free, paid versions give universities more control over customization and do not include links to Google on the results pages. While Penn has a link to Google on its homepage, none of the other seven Ivy League schools name the company providing searches on their main pages. But all -- including Penn -- credit the company on the results page or a dedicated search page. "It's not a corporate sponsorship," Couch said. "There's no quid pro quo here." "Google really was born on a university campus, so our founders have always had an allegiance to providing this kind of tool to universities," said Cindy McCaffrey, Google's vice president of corporate communications. McCaffrey could not provide an estimated cost for a customized search or an explanation of why, as Couch said, the price varied considerably during negotiations. According to an online ISC document dated October 10, 2000, "Google seems to return a more appropriate result set to the average tool user than [AltaVista]."

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