The services that ChaCha is adding to its search engine is search via text and voice over telephone devices. Hardly a novel concept. It's essentially 411 with operators searching Goo — sorry, ChaCha for results. So why did the cash-strapped state provide the millionaire with a couple more million?

It certainly doesn't hurt that close friend Governor Mitch Daniels, whom Jones has helped raise a million dollars for his reelection bid, is the Chairman of the Board for the IEDC.

In fact, Scott Jones scored twice. His other company, Precise Path Robotics, which builds robotic golf-course mowers, received just less than $2 million as well. For what purpose? To improve the existing robot's precision "[u]sing an innovative positioning system that surpasses GPS." (No word on whether Precise Path is launching satellites, but I suspect its innovative positioning system is as sophisticated as operators providing search results over the telephone.)

Fortunately for Jones, there are few competitors in Indiana for technology-related funds, and he has all the right friends. Which is, as everyone knows, always the best business plan, whether you're in Indiana or Silicon Valley.

Jones has already cut his own $100,000 check for Daniels's campaign and says $750,000 of the million-dollar goal is already committed. Jack Gill, an early ChaCha investor appointed by Governor Daniels as an Indiana University trustee, counts among the contributors with his own substantial donation. Likewise, John McIlwraith, managing director of Cincinnati-based venture capital firm Blue Chip Venture, also a ChaCha investor, is among Daniels's supporters.

McIlwraith, on his support for Daniels:

As far as governors who seem to get it when it comes to creating the right environment for high-growth tech companies, he's high on the list. If Indiana is successful, it will give us more investment opportunities. It feeds on itself.

The only real question, though, is whether Daniels's ties to ChaCha count as a political benefit. Indiana Democrats hope to portray Mitch Daniels as out of touch with the average Hoosier and in the pocket of fat-cat businessmen. Shouldn't be too difficult, since we suspect the average Hoosier uses Google.