EU to Develop Search Engine

William Robinson writes "Digital Media is reporting that French President Jacques Chirac is making plans for a European search engine called "Quaero" to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google. From the article: 'Those involved in the Quaero project, including Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, have said that it will be much more than a typical search engine. It will provide an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text. Quaero will also reportedly include a powerful translating tool which will be able to 'understand' audio as well as text. The developers plan to make Quaero available on all platforms, including PCs, mobile devices and digital TVs.'"

Anything you can do I can do better...

Welcome to the great technological pissing war.

Re:Anything you can do I can do better...

at least they're building search engines and space exploration vehicles instead of nuclear weapons.

You do realize, don't you, that France is a nuclear power[0], and sold[1] to Iraq 12.5kg of 93% U-235 and "research reactor".

And lets not forget the direct German help[2] in creating Iraqi chemical weapons.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of _mass_destruction [wikipedia.org]
[1] http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/facility/osiraq .htm [fas.org]
[2] http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/cw/az120103.htm l [fas.org]

Re:Why Google Won and Chirac Won't

Perhaps Chirac can win part of the popularity contest in France

Forget it. I'm a European myself, and I've seen that kind of projects. Plenty of them. They all fails, especially the French ones. There is a whole scene of companies that do nothing than burning through European subsidies, project after project after project. They complete them, boast about them, and then bury them. That works especially well when you add in that Gallic talent for just accidently and by chance always hiring well connected french companies only in European projects.

Look who's in the boat here - that reads like a who is who of the Public Fundinds Burning Society. Deutsche Telekom, France Telekom, both fornmer state monopolists, Thomson, french electronics giant and perpetual receiver of ample state subsidies. The rest is probably of similar calibre.

and usually bureaucratic fiat produces things like bureaucrats and Fiats

While your intent here is right and the wordplay is cute, that's deeply offensive to a great Italian car tradition that is way more succesfull and receptive to their customers needs than any EU buerocrats pet project ever could be.

January 16, 2011

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - January 16, 2011 - Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) today announced it acquired France, a country located in Western Europe, mostly associated with fine cheeses, wine, berets, and the 5-yr old search engine "Quaero".

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Re:January 16, 2011

More likely:

"26th of April 2006, Google declares war on France

  27th of April 2006, France surrenders and hands over presidency to Larry Page"

Real reason

The real reason is to filter out certain results on the query "French Military History".

Re:Real reason

In that case, why involve Deutsche Telekom? Or rather, why did
Deutsche Telekom get involved?

Nothing to see

Really little content in the article, a representative sample of which is "The ambitious project will probably not be available anytime in the near future. Quaero is still in the earliest stages of development, so early that none of the major players have yet ventured a guess as to how much the project might cost. When Quaero does launch, it will have a great deal of catching up to do."

So basically, a bunch of European telecoms companies are discussing how to compete with Google. And this is news why? Nothing to see here.

French search results?

Query: "King Richard the Lionheart"

Results: 1. "I fart in your general direction".

Seriously, though - I definitely think there's a market for an effective multimedia search engine: imagine being able to whistle a song into your mic, for example and being told what it was called.

Doomed to failure?

As much as I'd like to see something like this happen - it's a huge project, led by SEVERAL governments and telecom companies, neither of which are exactly known for efficiency or technical brilliance. And it doesn't seem like there's much profit incentive, which makes it even less likely to be finished efficiently...

It's great that the EU is trying to assert itself in this area - having the US control 90% of the internet's technology is exactly the type of monoculture that is decried on the desktop - but is there any way this project won't end up crushed under the weight of its own bureaucracy?

Missing Feature

It will also include a multi-lingual pony.

You know, I thought marketing vaporware claims were bad, but political marketing vaporware, now that's whole new dimensions of vapor. It's bad enough when marketing has excessive influence on tech development, can you imagine what it'll be like when politicians are involved as a matter of "national prestige"? I have not the humor chops to properly satirize that.

Three Cheers for an "Industrial Policy"

Shades of the Nixon-Khrushchev "kitchen debate".

The Soviets turned their national scientific and research genius into making *one* perfect washing machine, as the foolish Americans splintered their effort among competing companies tearing each other to shreds in destructive competition over shape and color.

"Today, we are behind you. Soon we will be even with you, and we shall pass you, in glorious progress toward perfect socialism and communism!" (or something like that).

How can feeble, fractured American enterprises like Yahoo and Google survive competition with the might of central, coordinated European industrial policy???

Right.

Wow

I'm usually not one to say that Slashdot is slow, but geeze, SNL got it first.

Something like its a search engine that after you enter in a query, it rudely refuses.

The Latin pedant steps in...

'Quaero' (Latin for 'to search')

No, it's Latin for 'I search'. The author should have Googled it [google.com].

I had also heard...

that France was looking to invent a "circular transportation facilitation device." Could I get someone to confirm that?

Quaero?

Sounds delicious! I'll have two, no onions.

A few points to the EU powermongers...

1. Try and come up with a domain name that isn't ambiguous in how it's said or spelt.

2. Start asking us EU citizens if we'd mind you spending our cash on something that isn't really required

3. get out of the mindset that the internet is somehow defined by geographical borders and edges - just what is an EU search engine? Does it just search the EU? What?

4. How about attacking the problem of low tech-esteem in Europe not by building a government-sponsered programme (which no doubt will require taxpayers money to be thrown at it year on year), but by fostering an environment where private tech companies can flourish (like in the US).

How much will they have to block.

Since most of Europe has 'hate speech' laws, how much of the net will this search engine be forced to block?

Not an EU project

Typical for Slashdot to get this wrong. This isn't an EU project. It's a collaboration between the French and German governments (and in fact they are only collaborating to encourage French and German companies to develop a search engine).

Re:Quaero.com taken

Check out http://www.quaero.com/ [quaero.com] [quaero.com] - its a marketing company from Charlotte, North Carolina.

And they're pretty damn good at viral marketing if they even get the President of France to advertise for them.

Re:I think it's called "independence".

Q:Why re-invent the wheel?
A:Ego

Also, it's not European companies, it's a European govenrment subsidising European companies.

Re:Why Is This in Politics??!!

Yet, this story has nothing to do with the US or politics really. What the EU does shouldn't be in this section.

In this you are very wrong. This is all about politics: get control of vital resources. EU views USA with Bush II in power with deep scepticism, and tries to wrestle as much control as they can since USA has become sort of unreliable. Quite simply, enemies of USA is scared more than ever and close allies are apprehensive. Those that thinks this is good are fools (not that I suggest that you thinks so).

Re:Why?

Also, just because the government says that it should "understand" spoken audio, I'm pretty sure that no existing technology could even come close...

Isn't the lack of existing technology usually the reason one funds research?

Re:Why?

the market isn't in charge of healthcare in America. Healthcare here is recovering from a hobbling brought on by the insistence that your employer is responsible for your health and because insurance companies dilute the sting of the overpriced costs. So before it gets better, it has to get worse. But if it's left to the same pressures that drive stereos, gym memberships and washing machines, it would be a non-issue.

And you really expect a self serving religious movement to exercise compassion efficiently? Compassionate people excercise compassion, not community organizations. Get enough money in an org and the greedy come in and push the compassion right out the door.

Yeah why must hollywood remake french movies?

Why did Nasa go into space when the russians had already done it? Why do anything if somebody else has already done it.

The following bit of info may shock some people so please, little kids leave the room, adults brace youreselve.

GOOGLE SUCKS AS A SEARCH ENGINE

Anyone still around? Good, we judge google by its peers and its peers are the totall crappers so by comparison google looks pretty good. BUT imagine that the people at google had thought "Oh, there already is a search engine no need to make another." We would still be using altavista or something.

Google is fairly good at returning pages regarding obscure linux error messages. When however your search should include words in common usage or possible of a retail product or god forbid be associated in anyway with the adult industry then you are floundering in page after page of crap results.

There is an even worse problem. Despite all what the fanboys will tell you Google is a business. A business that now not just provides search and ads but is becoming a content broker itself.

Could google one day prefer its own pages over others? For now the opposite it seems, I can't get google to return its own videos that it sells BUT some goverments might feel that internet search has become such an important tool that there is some importance to having an alternative to just depending on the US.

America is a funny country, ever since WW2 america has been complaining that it has to do foot the bill for the entire world defence. Europe thinks of creating a european army and the US gets upset. US taxpayer pay for the free GPS of the entire world and they complain. EU makes it own version and americans get upset.

Here is a suggestion for americans, you run your country your way and we run ours our way.

What you are missing is that not every goverment has the same motives. Perhaps some feel that not being a slave to america is a good thing. Since you aren't paying for it with your taxes what business is it of yours?