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.'"

Comments

Nothing to see

[Snamh Da Ean]

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.

Three Cheers for an "Industrial Policy"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The Latin pedant steps in...

[tibbetts]

'Quaero' (Latin for 'to search')

No, it's Latin for 'I search'. The author should have Googled it.

A few points to the EU powermongers...

[Aphrika]

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).

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

[bvwj]

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

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

Yeah why must hollywood remake french movies?

[SmallFurryCreature]

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?

Not an EU project

[brpr]

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).