Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Welcome to the great technological pissing war.
So they're reinventing Google, but in denial about it? GG France.
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.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
while there was always a quiet search engine war, ever since google blew up, search engines appear to be the new hotness/dotcom bubble.
Yet, this story has nothing to do with the US or politics really. What the EU does shouldn't be in this section.
I know the editors are trying to instigate another US vs. EU flamewar, why are they allowed to troll like this?
EU to develop its own TV... oh wait
Grundes!
what does it have to do with Apple?
The real reason is to filter out certain results on the query "French Military History".
Q: How exactly does Quaero translate: "Google is the best internet search engine ever made."
Inquiring minds want to know.
Check out http://www.quaero.com/ - its a marketing company from Charlotte, North Carolina.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Also, just because the government says that it should "understand" spoken audio, I'm pretty sure that no existing technology could even come close (<sarcasm>just look at the wonderful translation tools</sarcasm>).
><));>
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.
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.
Argh.
Using a name perhaps not associated with homosexuality in the UK would help perhaps :-)?
If it is something run by the EU, it's going to face a lot of political hurdles. I recognize that gov'ts are sometimes better at providing these services than companies, but the EU has a whole lot more red tape to get through than most other gov't organizations. And the French President supporting it is no promise it'll happen. He lost the vote to ratify the EU constitution in his country.
I'm not saying it won't happen, just that it'll face lots of problems in a new governmental organization that is still trying to get its feet under it.
of tinfoil hatters and "liberals" coming up bitching about why governments shouldnt run search engines for privacy and "who's paying for it" reasons.
ugh. bye bye karma i'll miss you
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
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?
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
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.
Ok, just saw this on SNL on sat nite. When SNL is beating slashdot to the tech news, it's time to retire.
I for one welcome Tina Fey as my new master. Oh Yea....
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
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.
There's just something slightly unseemly about this. Government-coordinated search just chafes, I guess - though much of Europe is presumably used to communicating over state-owned infrastructure anyway. But at least they'll have no trouble keeping pages about German WWII relics from being indexed, this way.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why everything american must be reinvented and/or redone? Mod me down if you must but I just dont get it. Seems like a huge waste of money to me but maybe I'm missing something.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
I can search for "anti americanism" and feel good about it...
Did somebody forget to include poland?
Jokes aside, Americans may laugh because google already indexes multimedia and a host of other information like scientific journals and nudey pics. But the Euros have a healthy dose of nationalism that will likely influence their homepage.
/.)
I don't think anyone can compete with google right now in a slug match on indexing, but other factors make special purpose internet hubs a winner. (a number already exist such as yahoo and
Something like its a search engine that after you enter in a query, it rudely refuses.
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
French President Jacques Chirac is making plans for a European search engine
"Quaero quickly surrenders its data centers to Google"
"Quaero results limited to wine, cheese, and speedo pics of Jerard Depardieu"
"Quaero snubs American visitors... But still loves Levi's, Coke, and American Pop Culture"
:wq
Why depend on American companies if you can do it with European ones?
Most europeans are quite happy with their californian-bred search engines. Plus, they don't have awkard names.
It's just a BloJJ
that France was looking to invent a "circular transportation facilitation device." Could I get someone to confirm that?
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
That we will get to see naked women present the search results? If so.. C'mon we all know Dan Rathers ass was too hairy!
Sounds delicious! I'll have two, no onions.
"It's a wonderful idea. But it doesn't work." -- Tad Danielewski
Say what you want about the French, but think I their vision is right on: (from the article...) 'Today the new geography of knowledge and cultures is being drawn. Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world.' Already, a lot of 'news' and 'information' in the world are manipulated by huge media organizations. You hear, listen, believe what CNN, NBC and BBC tell you, because that's what is available to you. As I think you'll all agree, with the WWW growing to an enourmous size, search engines become a critical source of information and it is scary to me that one entity in the world can fully control the index to information.
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).
Since this is kindda old news, there's already several stories in various news media. It ranges from wild guesses to (a few) facts. Quite interesting read.
In Europe, ".com" is not ubiquitous. Instead, the common format is to use the .xx country-based TLD. Or, if you are going to be EU-wide, as suggested in the article, then you would be Quaero.eu and not some silly .com
.xx results slightly over .com results. Or perhaps boosting links which get .xx links TO them instead of *all* links (translation: what is more important to Europeans, as valued by links, ranks higher than generic-global links). Or perhaps they'll give greater wait to .eu based clicks as votes.
:o
Additionally, who knows what kind of alternative algorithm tweak they might give results. For example, boosting
There are any number of ways to adjust the complex search result forumlas. Google is *not* the only game in town, even if they have been the best at it so far.
Don't playa-hate, Googlefanbois! See what Quaero comes up with, first. Hell, even dare to TRY it!
Vive le concurrence!
No one is going to have the foggiest idea how to type quero, queero, quato, kumquat, kuato or whatever the hell it is into their addrees bar.
This just seems like a combination of "wouldn't it be nice" on the part of the telecoms, with "F--- you, we will not use your pig-dog search teqnologique" from the french. Combine those two sentiments with classic European beaurocracy and what do you get? 12 review boards, 17 redrafted amendments to 14 bills, $3 billion of wasted tax money and, erm, that's it.
So this search engine will run on all platforms, index everything in every type of media, etc. etc. etc.
While they're at it, why don't they just say it will cure cancer and bring an end to poverty and war?
In other words, this is all vaporware. We should all know by now that the claims of a project when it is started can be very different from the reality when (oops, make that "if") it is completed.
Perhaps the French are just pissed off that with Google one can type "French Military Victories" and hit I'm feeling lucky to see a fake google error message saying no web pages found. Better yet, perhaps socialist countries do not believe in page rankings. It's not fair to the lower ranked pages to be at the bottom, every page should have the same rank.
The European Union managed to roll out a search engine in just under a week of development time. Leaders of the nations of the EU self-congratulated for 2 hours while announcing to the world that America has lost its lead in technological superiority. Some of the technology used in the search engine was licensed from companies held by non-EU entities.
One week later. In a surpricing turn of events the European Union's search engine has stopped functioning after the American company Google has blocked the IPs of Quaero's servers.Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
:wq
of "conservatives" coming up bitching about why governments shouldn't run search engines because governments should be smaller and such things should be left to private companies.
ugh. if only i weren't an AC i could get all that delicious karma
It will fail if it is backed by Germany and France. Both of those countries have laws which force companies to filter hate speech, or at the very least help track the people down. That overhead, which Google doesn't have to deal with, will weigh heavy on their ability to offer untainted search results. That's in addition to other government red tape. That's a huge burden that Google doesn't have.
igital 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.
"Making plans for" is a long, long way from delivering anything. I'm betting that once they start to realize the scope of what they're suggesting, they will change their tune a bit. Or at least scale back the idea somewhat. A google that understands audio and video?
Good luck though, because after all it's saying "why not" that makes change happen - but I think they'll be surprised when they realize the magnitude of their undertaking. Underestimating Google is a classic internet blunder.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Instead they've got a consortium of bloated bureaucracies - both corporate and political ones. This approach has absolutely ZERO chance of a technological success; so it 100% belongs in the politics camp.
And I'm serious. French declarations and large telecoms are no place to create the next Google any more than SBC or TimeWarner is. A couple college kids will blow them away simply becasue the college kids don't have to put up with the bureaucracy.
QuaErotic.com would be a great name for a naughty website
Why should governments run search engines?
Why should the users trust that the government will provide fair search results free of bias?
Why should a government run search engine be better than a private run search engine?
GPL Deconstructed
I am sure that this search engine will have all sorts of wonderful hidden features... for example, if someone searches for information about risky or unhealthy behavior, I am sure the search engine will at least give them a warning, if not omitting the information (after all, the government has an obligation to protect people). I am sure it will definitly ommit information about illegal activities. I am sure the system will profile people based on their search topics, so that potential terrorists, hate criminals, etc., can be tracked and dealt with by the government. And I have a hard time believing that a search engine operated by the government will give good results if we search for information critical of the government.
In the end, if not enough people use the search engine to justify spending the massive amount of money on it, the government will make other search engines illegal!
50 years from now, when someone suggests that maybe search engines shouldn't be run by the government, the standard historical revisionist arguements will be brought out: Before search engines were nationalized, search engines were so expensive that only the rich could afford to search for things on the internet! And that even those who could afford to pay to use a search engine entered a "wild west danger zone", where virtually any information could be found without being strictly licenced and controlled by the government. And everyone will tell themselves how much more democratic and progressive a government monopoly search engine is, and how terrible it was back in the day when nearly anyone could put information on the internet to be found by anyone else.
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
I'm waiting for a press release that say something like "Those involved in the Chameleon search engine project have stated that Chameleon will be a complete ripoff of existing search engines, with little to no innovation."
I'm long past getting excited about products that were just announced by groups that have no significant track record in the area they are proposing to enter.
It's a bit pathetic how so many in France seem to be unable to resign themselves that France is not a superpower anymore, and has not been one for many years. As an European, I find it annoying that the French government wants to compensate for that by manipulating the European Union in a (doomed) attempt to be a superpower again - it is a well-known fact in Europe that France (and Germany, to a lesser extent) are happy with the European Union as long as they are the one calling the shots. Well, I guess that we'll have to wait until the generations from before the 50s are gone for good.
bla bla bla... lots of pi$$ing against the EU in this thread....
Did you notice that JAPAN is doing exactly the same?? Builing an own search engine... wheeew... Now please start with some inadequate polemic flameing. - great.
Anyways... the de factor google monopoly is not good.
I'll definitely use it, if only to spite America..
Using a name perhaps not associated with homosexuality in the UK would help perhaps :-)?
In Europe anything connected with the UK is automatically associated with three things: awful cuisine, lively and spirited women and an almost uniformly homosexual aristocracy.
Putting together a project like that simply because they don't want to use commercial offerings based in the United States is stupid. Without solid motivation, ingenuity and demand, it is doomed to fail.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
i apologise for the name...
Take people with the same energy as those who work for the DMV, and put them up against people with the same energy as those who work for your average car dealer.
Train both sets of people to become software developers.
Let's bet on the outcome. Public programmers are shams just like public workers in any public office. Cronying at best, lazy worthless animals at worst.
How Europeans continually think that they can compete by removing competition and giving it to government is beyond me.
Since most of Europe has 'hate speech' laws, how much of the net will this search engine be forced to block?
They should just buy enough Google stock in order to put someone on the board to represent their interests. It would be much easier and probably cheaper than a big project like this.
Government search you!
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/dublinclontarf
"...It will also engineer itself, be telepathic, cure all known diseases, absolve us of our sins, and come with a free pony."
The technology is a virtual copy of Google, but their pigeons get eight weeks of vacation per year and full pensions.
This concept seems to scare a lot of Americans.
Or why is it that everytime a European company starts to compete with US companies, all those Americans here start whining?
And btw., I really doubt the US has invented searching...
http://www.quaero.fr/ Maybe?
.. they don't understand the words "market" and "forces".
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
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. and while we are dreaming... the EU will be offering a pony to every little girl and boy and a Christmas turkey to all families (except ones of North African heritage and anyone who has used the term "Nazi" in the last 20 year)
When has a government ever provided a service like this that is better and cheaper than what the market would have produced?
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
That way, the results may be completely unexpected and unpredictable and it will be OK.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Seems to me the EU is trying to reduce their reliance on U.S based technology. I wonder if they will start up their own Internet too.
What a boondoggle. This will make the Concorde project (estimated cost per plane: $9.8M, actual cost per plane $90M) look like a success. The French are so Socialist that they think that Chirac is a Capitalist.
Unreal.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
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?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The people who thought this up don't have much of a clue.
They mention that they want to create this new search engine "to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google." I assume that means that they want this search engine to make as much money as Yahoo and Google.
News Flash: the "search" part of Yahoo and Google really doesn't make a lot of money. It's just a vehicle for all their other projects.
Yahoo makes a ton of money because they have their hand in a lot of different pies, as evidenced by their homepage.
Google makes almost all their money from AdSense, which is possibly the most profitable advertising technique ever created.
Both companies found new and novel ways to use existing technology.
So what I would like to know is, in order to "rival" the other major players in search, what is Quaero going offer other than search that will make them money? If they charge for their basic service, then people will just use other free alternatives, such as *gasp* Yahoo and Google.
If they want to rival these companies technologically, then they are sinking a ton of money into a "me, too" service.
What's the point, again? To stand up and say, "Listen to us, we're the EU!"?
Methinks someone is feeling left out.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
when the Norman French conquered Britain
Or when Napoleon captured most of Europe
Of course you might mean when they ignominiously pulled out of Vietnam leaving the Americans to bring a succesful conclusion to the war there.
Don't know, they've never done it.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
they're just as likely to complain that we should have government funded search engines in the U.S. because of some goofy argument involving the "growing digital divide."
Why did you put liberal in a quotation? Since when is running a search engine a basic government service ?
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
I work for the EC, at the r&d section (indeed, they do have such a thing - it is called RTD), and through the 'work' I -try- to do there, I think it can be stated clearly that the EC is not capable of creating a simple web application, let alone a proper search engine.
I understand the new French search engine has already surrendered to the German engine.
But I got a suggestion for any eu citizen who thinks the US is heaven on earth. Emigrate. It is actually fairly easy provided you got some half decent job skills and money. No you are not allowed to say anything bad about US immigration policy, remember, your a US fanboy.
1. Pff, I link to it once and that is it. I can always google for it
2. I rather they spend it on this then on a war.
3. Perhaps a search engine that does not bow to the Chinese goverment in the name of the almighty dollar?
4. Yeah, because the top cellphone company is european and all your pc's are made in the US. No I rather we keep our model. So do the majority of EU voters. EU socialist, US capatalist. Move to location of your choice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since we like competition so much (I know I do), why complain about some government who just wants to be Yet Another Competitor? So what! Let them build it, then you can bitch about it.
It will be more expensive to run, cost money to do searches and try to block stuff that is uncompetitive with their high prices.
I'm just waiting for the Flat Earthiers and "conservatives" to explain why the government should run search engines to wade through the phone calls of citizens without warrant; or, will it be the normal "six degrees of separation from Bin Laden" explanations.
Sorry mods, someone has to say it. Give my karma points to the American citizens.
Anyway, the French government may have something interesting to add to this. Google had two kids on a mission to inform, who happened to realize that if the Internet is a popularity contest, the winner would be the most link-able. The government's may not have had the insight to develop Page Rank, but I'm sure they've spent many years trying to translate voice to text. I'd imaging the world governments might also be able to do a good bit of image recognition. Don't you think the US has this, or something close, on their droids. Some of this government technology, if it exist (and I have to believe it does and the NSA is using it), could be very profitable when added to a search engine. And if France has already developed it, then maybe they will have a step up on the competition.
Also, has anyone else every gotten bugged out by the name gmail? Though I know better (or not), I can't help but get spooked sometimes. It seems that it could somehow relates to GovernmentMAIL. Ok, that's just silly. At least I know I earned my -1 karma mod this time.
And American hands are clean? NOT!
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1223-11.htm
Now tell the whole story or STFU.
Why not reinvent the wheel, the EU is doing it with Galileo to reivent GPS so why not reinvent Google as well? One possible reason is how protective of their native tounge the French are, they even have an institute l'Académie Française (translation ) dedicated to protecting it from contamination of foreign words! This battle is intense in the anglophone-dominated realm of the internet which the institue would rather refer to as toile d'arraigée-mondiale (TAM) rather than World Wide Web (WWW)
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).
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
Slashdot posted about the ESA's space Ion Engine just a few days ago...
Oh. This is another kind of search engine? Why not use Google?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Why do the Europeans feel the need to reinvent the wheel everytime they do something? Why do that have to have a version of their own for everything, especially when something like Google is free?
Why do they feel the need to make it a state organized endevor?
As if the EU were bathing in extra cash and can afford to be doing this kind of thing. Isn't Germany's unemployment something like 12%? Isn't Fance's higher?
Why don't they do something new and be innovators instead of follows trying to replace something that's already pretty damn good. Leave the follow and makes worse to M$, they're the specialists.
Perhaps somebody from the Euro area can explain this to me...
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Google: sell, Sell, SELL !!!!!
$2000? Maybe 2000 pesos.
And Why should I trust companies?
Slave on...
I love Chirac, he always cracks me up ... Only a little more than one year to wait until the next elections, pfiou ...
...it will only accept French and Esperanto, and will never return information about the private lives of Presidents.
Radio on your iPod
That's a bunch of big German companies and buckets of government money. Who are supposed to be the technical people behind this thing? What's their track record?
A big part of the reason behind Google's success is the business track record of the people running it and the top-notch talent they have picked up from other research labs. Of course, making the first few hundred employees millionaires probably also provided ample motivation. I don't see anything like that happening in Europe.
Isn't the lack of existing technology usually the reason one funds research?
Very true, and some of the research into translation technology sponsored by the EU is acutally quite innovative. Not only are they making progress on audio-in, audio-out, on the fly translation but some of the systems being worked on in connection with this like for example: directional loudspeakers that allow every delegate in an auditorium to listen to a speech in a different language without using headphones and without disturbing the guy in the next seat 2ft away are quite amazing. It will be interesting to see these systems mature. I know the EU is not exactly a model of efficiency any more than the US Federal govt. but not everything they do is a complete waste of money. I would be alot more worried about Deutsche Telekom being involved in this search engine than the EU.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Never heard of the Battle of the Marne, eh ?
now I won't have to hire that French translator. Good job Jacques.. you now also are single-handedly contributing to the largest ever demise of the French economy -- after this comment
I will be useful to search for bomb recipes after Homeland Security makes Google log or filter queries on this and other subjects that are only of interest to terrorists (like "freedom", "democracy", "civil rights", "secret prisions" and such)
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
How true. The time's long past that conservatives championed citizen rights and fiscally responsible government. They smartened up. Stupid "liberals".
Nope.
You see?
there is one that dont remember exactly how it was, but was like an elephant is a butterfly designed by a comitee. Now, if we will have something elegant and minimal like google designed by a comitee of government agencies, how it will be?
I saw that: "France is making a new search engine called 'Quaero'. You just type in what you're looking for and Quaero will refuse to look it up for you."
imho - It should be obvious to all. They probably weren't impressed with Google's ranking of their comedic god Jerry Lewis.
Results 1 - 10 of about 363,000 English pages for "Jerry Lewis" French. (0.40 seconds)
By the time this project is completed (3-4 years?), the industry's landscape would have changed so much that it will be irrelevant. Even if it takes them 2 years to get to a beta from conception (probably less than how long it took MS), there is no way to predict how much more advanced the field will become. Their solution is to basically copy the current top players while throwing in a little hocus-pocus about indexing audio and video.
If reliably indexing multimedia is doable with today's technology (which it really isn't), Google, Yahoo, and MSN will have this in and out of beta and ready for production long before the EU has it.
By the time the project is live, it will be a copy (and derivation) of two to five year old technology. Predictably, it will be behind on various other related-fields that are out of its scope, such as Mapping, Local, News, OS integration or anything else that yahoo/google/msn has already introduced as of now. Imagine how much further those will each progress in the next two to five years and it's easy to see why this "ambitious" project will probably fade away into obscurity shortly after launch as just another search engine, killing its operational and research budget due to low returns, and thus destroying further development -- something it will desperately need if it will gain any market share in the long term.
Some would argue the America-centric nature of the current market leaders will hurt them against an EU counterpart; however, this is still a relatively new field with the leaders emerging in the US. Google is winning because it is perceived as the best, and the fact that it is US oriented certaintly hasn't stopped it from becoming world reknown in only a few years. Even in the past year, the dominant engines have pushed to internationalize themselves.
There is another big reason why this will fail. Without speculating on MSN or Yahoo, Google has, on many ocassions, stated it collects all of its data and uses it to learn context. For example, Google's translation system should improve as they index more and more text in foreign languages. Their search results should sharpen in acuracy as their engine refines context sensitive queries. Context is an extremely important part of translation. Systems using old word/phrase conversion technques already exist and suck. What will the EU base their "advanced" translation system on? Without massive amounts of comparable language data (such as, say, scanned books), their system will be just as limited as anything you can buy in the stores.
In short, unless the current market leaders screw up, it's going to take a lot more than merely copying current technologies to grab any significant market share. Half the battle is usage data and result adjustments, which requires market share. Unless the EU's project is loosely defined, given plenty of budgetary flexibility, has no necessarily permanent feature goals, it will not be able to adapt quickly enough to survive the current or future market. Since we're talking about management riddled in red tape, I highly doubt it meets any of the requirements I just mentioned.
Peter Griffin: Gays don't vomit. They're a very clean people. And they've been that way ever since they came over to this country from France.
;)
So now they are developing a "queero" search engine to locate them all?
Slashdot-French News Agency Sues Google News
Slashdot-France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort
Slashdot-AXA sues Google over AdWords
Who else is going to index this stuff if google has been legislated out of it?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Because if you don't, you can start your own, or at the very least choose to buy from another one.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
It takes an entire European Continent, a cluster of countries and multibillion dollar monopoly corporations to compete with one single company? It just goes to show you how powerful US and Google is.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
The real reason is to filter out certain results on the query "French Military History".
A funny question on the face of it but a very serious one if you think about it. What is to stop a government built search engine from tweaking the results just a bit to elimate embarrasment?
I think governments have no business in entreprises that involve shaping what media citizens see.
And for those paranoid about NSA apying, just why do you think they aim to parse the audio in the first place? Hint; It's not primarily so that you can find every audio file in the world that mentions "Tea and Crumpets" in ten seconds flat.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...to Geugle.
Unless you blatantly ignore copyrights (which is problematic for a government-led project), a modern search engine can't really take off and become a useful tool.
On the other hand perhaps that is exactly why the government is the only body to be able to do this - they can simply assign special rights to themselves.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
RE:["Quaero" to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google]
http://www.gahooyoogle.com/
this website is shit!
Or in fact many of the high-tech military companies in Europe, which are very successful as a result of public-private models. And if you think the American equivalents are somehow less government-dependent, try again: look at the US military budget...
As for profit well thats a no-brainer - they can just stick google ads everywhere! ;)
Nothing to add to your comment, but isn't it beautiful how you spelled "spelt"?
To do list for Windows
the french will understand audio
yeah right!, they will probably dub all of it in french like on their tv channels
seriously i'm european and why do you want to do this
they seriously have to come up with far better features to defeat the most used
search engine today: google
and even then i still don't see the point of investing money in this, it's not like
google is charging money for searches or is decreasing the results for europeans (GPS)
"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"
In what was does U.S. control of the root DNS server constitute any kind of cultural control that you imply?
And anyway, I've never heard anyone accuse the U.S. of having a single culture. If you need proof, compare and contrast the culture of Boston to that of the southeast. There's even multiple languages spoken in the U.S.!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The title says it all!
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Is the Linux kernel or the BSDs about ego? After all, they are reimplementations of UNIX.
Perhaps some of the developers do it to supplement their ego. But more often than not you find that people contribute to Linux and the BSDs because they have something beneficial to add, but cannot do so under the existing framework or system (ie. UNIX).
Sometimes one must do some reimplementation in order to make improvements. That appears to be what the case is here. Of course such improvements could be made to Google, but most likely not by those who wish to make such enhancements. Thus they need to create their own similar platform to work with.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Except for the fact that all these "new" features they have mentioned have been tried by the most talented (read: American) developers out there. What makes them think that some government-sponsored conglomerate is going to do things that Google can't do?
Internet was free and safe place for meetings in cyber space... unless politicians noticed that it is full of terrorists and uncontrollable services that needs to be controlled and programmatically improved for the good of mankind (and against the will of mankind).
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
The French have been ruining the world for the past several hundred years. Ignore this modern attempt.
Disclaimer: I'm (mostly) french.
This isn't the first time our dear (cough) beloved (gak) President presses for a catch-up plan in the digital world. Remember he started a project to digitize our paper legacy, in an attempt to counter Google's similar but english-language project.
Now I can vaguely undestand the motivation behind such a move: present a counter force against english-language cultural domination. (considering how China is growing, I'm not sure american culture is the one to be feared in the coming century). This *is* a cultural problem on the internet. I'd rather we all speak a common language, but to each his own.
Maybe he's trying to get his name in the history books for starting such projects. People tend to try that when they get to that age. I could understand that too.
Of course, this project would be in direct competition with Google, such as it's presented. It strikes me as basic economic common sense that a trans-european politically-led project has not a snowball's chance in hell in any market competition.
Maybe as an academic project?...
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Just because a European government and some European companies have some plans, doesn't mean the European Union itself is behind all this. The article doesn't say anything about the EU, the /. summary is wrong.
First they felt bad US owns the backbone of Internet so they stepped up to control it and/or make their own "European Internet".
Now that it didn't quote work our, they decided to settle for the next big thing, which is have their own "European Search Engine".
What the hell is that? A joke? And I actually live in Europe so it hurts to say this. I'd be proud if an European company comes up with "the next Google" but coming from the French government it comes up as a "me too" behaviour.
Welcome to Le Web Trois point Zéro
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ok, if the french are going to spearhead this effort,
i'm expecting something like minitel, the pride of the french, government backed, software industry
i don't know why exactly, for maybe cultural or economic reasons,
europe has a hard time competing in the world of commercial software.
and now the govt is getting behind it.
anytime something like this happens in europe, you end up with things like:
- farm and vineyard subsidies
- french movies
- minitel
with the exception of the food, the rest of the stuff has shown limited success, especially within the global market.
i suspect an EU/French govt. backed software initiative will be the same.
for some reason, there is a belief that anything for the greater good must be govt. sponsored, controlled, and beat to death
just an opinion.
BTW - if you haven't seen it yet, check out minitel.
it's great if you like retro style character based dumb terminal application.
www.minitel.fr - no screen shots, but you may be able to gleen some stuff from the site.
No, seriously. We had serious doubts even before he had his stroke in November, but with his latests speechs, it's now confirmed: our president is running on a brain-dead automated bullshit-generating mode.
It is also a nice paradox that our EU leaders prefer to fund a huge, bureaucratic project with no clear goals or timelines, rather than actually protecting our capacity to develop and innovate freely, just by banning software patents. Unfortunately, it seems that software patents are back with a revenge...
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
Do you notice how its an EU search engine but only France and Germany are involved, Hmm. It could be another example of two EU governments thinking they are the EU and not wanting (note) any UK help because we Speak that "evil" worldwide language. Lets face it, if it was an EU event more than 2 in 26 countries would need to be involved.
Quaero won't have a chance if the EU insists on legalizing software patents. Google and Yahoo and countless others will eat their lunch.
well it's a good thing they picked a domain name that's already in use by a marketing firm "Quaero"
I got an idea. Why not get rid of the EU, since it makes the decent people of Europe seem so idiotic. What's so wrong with Google and Yahoo! and what makes the European govt. compelled to compete?
Cool, social welfare for the IT crowd! My girlfriend wants to move back to her home in Europe, perfect timing! 6 month vacations, 35-hour weeks, can't fire me for not working rules, and all sorts of other goodies! Goodbye freedom-fries, hello petite fours!
Oh, and did somebody say something about building a search engine?
[ducks]
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
It was just a joke. Though the French were alone if wikipedia serves me correctly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Marne_( 1918)
This is not the sig you are looking for...
How is it that government agencies think they can even compete with private enterprise? Governments don't compete: they simply ramrod things through via mandate, or fiat. Who needs to compete with Google? Just declare google illegal! A committee is often defined as "an entity with 50 arms and 50 legs that goes nowhere." Quaero is being built by an association of governments: That's two or three orders of magnitude above that of a committee. For that matter, how is Google bad? Perhaps there should be a "Google shortcomings" page...
I'm sure I'll be quoted in year to come saying that this will be complete and utter cock
-SweatyBox
"I for one welcome our not-motivated-by-profit overlords."
I'm sure the French will, too.I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
i dunno man, France and Germany (but really the French) usually think they constitute the whole of the EU, what with the way they treat other members.(See EU farm subsidies).
Ermm, I don't think you yanks should be talking to much about who sold what to whom, hmmm? We wouldn't want to dredge up that whole Iran-contra embarassment again would we? Hmmm, no.
And also let's not mention the fact it was an American-supplied strain of anthrax to Iraq that found it's way back into Tom Daschle's mailslot, was it not? Hmmm. No, best not talk to much about who sold what to whom.
If Google sucks, name something better. It's idiocy to say "Google sucks and only is popular because everything sucks more."
News flash: SEARCH IS DIFFICULT. Yes, it would be nice if someone made a search engine that could read our minds and deliver exactly what we want. But the fact that a problem has a perfect solution doesn't mean that it is possible to get to that solution. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a "good" search engine to come along - if you are, you obviously don't understand the complexities of the problem.
This is an excellent idea. I rather wish they spend my tax money on research in data mining than wasting it building military equipment. Sure, *if* they initiate this project, it may fail. *Maybe* they won't produce a search engine that can match Google. But for certain, they will stimulate the local IT industry and their research results will be very useful. It is similar to how the US Department of Defense stimulates their IT business by developing high-tech weapons. But I rather have a high-tech search engine than a high-tech cannon.
Funny, you can still get any number of commercial products glorifying the USSR and communism, a society that killed over 60 million people, and that maintained concentration camps right up to the present day almost. Yet, it's not "banned" in Yirrup or France in particular. oui can "deny" in print that the socviet union didn't kill those people, and you aren't arrested for it.
Hypocrites de luxe. "Hate speech" laws are by themselves anathema to freedom, period. You either have free speech, or you do not. One man's "hate speech" is another man's "I'm defending myself in an argument and making a point". One person labeled a "terrorist" thinks of themselves as a "freedom fighter".
Slippery slope and you are on it and are sliding fast and you don't have any brakes. Good Luck with your political correctness, because it will come home to haunt you eventually when YOU run afoul of some bogus "hate" law.
You know, I think I have heard this type of thing before. Didn't many years ago the French decide that they want to create their own custom communications system called the Telefax? They spent millions upon millions to implement the system, and now, with the advent of the internet, they are stuck with this legacy system that is doing nothing for them now but taking up space and wasting money? I think that if you leave the french to build their own private system, and have it pretty much become usless junk. That is what I feel will happen here too...
you need the accent to make it funnier, here, I'll help:
Lunnin'-do' Lackee of Impilleelis' Wessern Militallee-Industleuh Com-plex.
say it out loud fast, it works.
I'm german. And I say: Nothing to worry about "Quaero".
"Quaero" will definitivly fail!
Why "Quaero" will fail? The answer are easy:
1.) It's a big goverment project. Projects of goverments, especially big project in france, are always failing.
2.) The "Deutsche Telekom" will be involved in "Quaero". Projects where "Deutsche Telekom" is involved are always failing.
So, keep cool. "Quaero" will never become real.
Will search engine show a white flag when it cannot find any results for the search?
A geography lesson is also in order.
Why does all European/political stories have the American flag on top of the page?
1. Government, with forethought, creating a state of the art software application. Government has been at the root of some ground breaking technologies, but usually not because of any done by people at the top (except maybe for some who had the vision to get out of the way).
2. France doing anything that will attract world acclaim for innovation. Somebody probably will provide counterexamples, but I hope they are not too historical.
3. An indefinite completion timeline. Usually a bad idea for software projects.
4. A feature list of pie in the sky technologies (parse and index "audio" in multiple languages??!!).
5. Multiple bureaucratic entities involved.
... the way France handle things related to computer technology... You wanted Google to be French, well too bad for you, it's too late, you should have taught computer science in high-schools... In France CS before higher studies is some occasional classes on "using word" and after it is highly mathematical and theoretical (which is good, IF you already have a strong practical CS background). The highest diploma for a professor is called the aggregation.. it doesn't exist for CS, so math teacher teach it... It's too late to come whining. Heck, Jacques Chirac himself ridiculized himself when, in a meeting with Bill Gates, he asked him what that "mouse" thing was all about. Oh by the way, I am French, so it's not some ignorant French bashing I'm doing here. They'd better try and attract (or at least retain, living in the US now...) CS people rather than have this big government oriented project kind of things.
\u262D = \u5350
Quaero? My goodness. Talking about user-friendliness.
Try this. Open notepad, close your eyes count from 30 to 1 while trying to empty your mind. Then try typing "Quaero" (no peeking!).
See how many typos you have.
To quote AC:
Funny, you can still get any number of commercial products glorifying the USSR and communism, a society that killed over 60 million people, and that maintained concentration camps right up to the present day almost. Yet, it's not "banned" in Yirrup or France in particular. oui can "deny" in print that the socviet union didn't kill those people, and you aren't arrested for it.
Perhaps Chirac can win part of the popularity contest in France by getting some academics and engineers to produce a service that's elegant, efficient, and French, something with the spirit of Eiffel as opposed to Inspector Clouseau or Derrida or De Gaulle or Sartre. Or perhaps he can pull off another Minitel - lightweight and pretty lame but good enough to get the job done given the lack of competition. And hopefully he can produce something that provides really good access to the information produced by the French government. But bureaucratic fiat isn't the way to produce popularity - you need a combination of luck, really really good technical skills, willingness to experiment, and a deep understanding of what your potential customers might want, and usually bureaucratic fiat produces things like bureaucrats and Fiats.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
on the concept and implementation of "vaporware". But that's okay ... if they actually pull off any of this wonderful-sounding stuff it will just provide some more competition to keep Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft on their toes.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
But its time to exercise my rights to free speech...
glorifying the USSR and communism, a society that killed over 60 million people
And did you know, you can get merchandise glorifying the USA, a society that killed millions of native americans and vietnamese, to name but a few? I'm shocked, I tell you. And the English, who murdered and displaced millions in a knock-kneed effort at an empire? Did you know you can still get union jacks in some parts of the world? Disgraceful.
Hypocrites de luxe.
So tell me, if I float a zepplin over New York City saying "thank god the twin towers got blown up, all praise allah", that would be cool with you? How about taking out an advert in the LA times explaining why "niggers" should be treated less equally due to their obvious poor social performance? Thats all good? I know, wait, I'll threaten the president. Freedom uber alles, baby!
You either have free speech, or you do not.
The world has more colours in it than black and white, son. That might not jive with a nice totalitarian starship troopers worldview, but that doesn't make it less true.
One man's "hate speech" is another man's "I'm defending myself in an argument and making a point"
If by context one is arguing a point, and not trying to rewrite history, there is no problem with saying what you like.
YOU run afoul of some bogus "hate" law.
Yes, they are churning out those anti-hate speech laws at a fierce rate. Why only last week they set up a new one to deny people the right to dislike traffic wardens! Oh no wait, they didn't. In fact, they haven't set up any new ones at all. Can you say a government that knows when to stop? Must seem like a fantastical concept to you murkins I know...
Listen here, you turkey, heres how it is. We don't like to give the time of day to nazi apologists, nor waste any more time arguing with them. Maybe you have the excess wind to blow (in fact I'd bet on it), but I surely don't. So what I'll do instead is I'll lock the shites up and have done with them, and make sure they don't twist any more young minds to their sick creed, and you can fuck off back to texas where you pig misses you. Hows that?
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I didn't know Jacques had skills in web programming, CGI & Ajax.
This is nothing more than a method to direct some EU funds towards French and German companies (state-owned in the case of France Telecom) rather than towards the poorer EU members.
France and Germany are two of the largest contributors to the EU budget, so don't be surprised when they suggest projects that ensure they get a good return on their "investment".
It's not so much a 'anti-US' thing (what's wrong with using Google anyway?) as it is a way for France and Germany to give indirect subsidies to their largest IT companies.
Danger Will Robbins....Danger! NoMorePoints.com
Create a more hospitable corporate environment in France, or Europe, and maybe companies like Google will plant themselves there. It's so simple, that's been our strategy here in the U.S. all along.
Of course, it's almost certainly going to fail for them.
I love it when some big body, famous for posturing, blustering and not actually getting around to really doing someting issues a blustering posturing press release about what they are gonna do someday...
Wake me up when it happens.
*meeeoowww*
-l
All you guys bashing quaero/france/eu/whatever are just missing the point. Quaero is just a try by french/german governments to create some kind of a world-leading internet company like they did with airbus...
Greetings from Germany!
Last year more than half of my income went directly to the government. My gross wage is slightly above 30.000 dollars. I cost my about employer about twice that. Good thing I'm pretty smart and can so meet the productivity target which allows my company to continue to employ me. 5.000.000 of my fellow country men aren't so lucky.
I love google.
I want my money back.
PS: Deutsche Telekom sucks Monkey Wangs and anyone whos ever wanted DSL from them knows that is a fact.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me