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EU Google Competitor Project Gets Aid Worth $166 Million

Posted by Zonk on from the euoogle-maybe-or-goorope dept.

mernil wrote with the news that the EU Commission has given the go-ahead to provide funding for Germany's search engine project, called Theseus. Early this year we discussed Germany's withdrawal from the French project Quaero. From the outside, it looks like the EU Commission is unwilling to put all its eggs in one basket, funding the German project to the tune of 120 million euro, or $US 166 million. Dow Jones reports: "The aim is to develop new search technologies for the next generation Internet, including 'semantic technologies which try to recognize the meaning of content and place it in its proper context.' The semantic Web has been considered the next evolution of the Internet at least since Tim Berners-Lee, widely considered a creator of the current version of the Internet, published an article describing it in 2001. In theory, a semantic Web could receive a user request for information about fishing, for example, and automatically narrow the results according to the user's individual needs rather than blanket the user with pages related to numerous aspects of fishing. The Commission's funding approval Thursday immediately sparked talk of building a potential European challenger to Web search leader Google Inc."

6 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Theseus, by name, is doomed to fail by erroneus · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's got to be a fun name. "Yahoo!" was a fun name. "Google" is a fun name. "Eureka" would be a fun and successful name... unfortunately, the company's products suck... (but they are supposed to... it's a vacuum cleaner company.) They should pick a name like that. Theseus makes people think of "Thesaurus" and c'mon! Who wants to use that?

  2. They rejected my name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I suggested "communism." You know, the web, people working together, global village, all that loveliness. But apparently it has some negative conitations from before my time. Oh well.

  3. Here come the flames by JohnnyGTO · · Score: 1, Funny

    Cause we all know Al Gore invented it!! :-)

    --
    Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
  4. Re:uh... by Maxmin · · Score: 5, Funny

    There isn't much to the internet without http. The only other protocol that comes even close

    I know! Those other silly protocols, like SMTP, IMAP4, MIME, POP3, DNS, NTP, FTP, SIP, SNMP, SSH, telnet, RPC, RTSP, TLS/SSL, SOAP, ... nobody uses 'em much.

    --
    O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
  5. Re:uh... by Kohath · · Score: 1, Funny

    Are you Al Gore?

  6. Re:Funding down the toilet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    And, of course, an American search engine would have black bars where anybody would expect tits and a *beep* over every f*beep*.