There’s a specialised human rights search engine that’s been launched – Hurisearch – involving most of the larger players in that field, and offering the opportunity for small organisations to join in.

Given the recent announcements about Google’s customised search offering I was anticipating that it would be built on the back of that technology. Instead it’s a service that has been developed over the last 3 years by FAST – an enterprise search company.

The timing of the two announcements though has the perennial development debate whirring away in the back of my mind – when is it better to use a ’shrink-wrapped’ solution or to ‘roll your own’?

In this case there’s an interesting fact tucked away in the Hurisearch documentation – they need $187,000 a year to keep the service going.…