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EU Google Competitor Project Gets Aid Worth $166 Million
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."
This is a ridiculous waste of taxpayer money, and a good demonstration of all that is wrong with beurocratic top-down European Union thinking (and I speak as a European).
If you really want to promote innovation, then stop wasting taxpayer money on this type of crap and lower corporate taxes, encouraging an environment where the fit will thrive and the unfit will die.
Of course, google didn't come from government subsidies, it came from a few bright guys who made a startup and made it succeed by their hard work and sweat.
The lesson Europe needs to learn is that the way to compete with the USA is not by trying to copy everything the USA does (google, GPS systems, operating systems, etc etc) but with government funding. The way to beat them is to innovate and make brand new things, made by the people who are passionate about doing something new and will pour their hearts and souls into it. That's why the Intel, Google, and Microsoft started in the USA, and why the European knockoffs all failed. You can't drive it from the top down: you have to let it grow from the bottom up. As soon as Europe learns this, there will be nothing to stop it.
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.
That is pretty much what the THESEUS program is! Lots of academic and institutional research groups with centrally coordinated goals and objectives.
From the about page of the THESEUS website http://theseus-programm.de/about_theseus:
"At the current time, 31 research institutions, universities, and companies have joined the THESEUS program with planned projects. The industrial and public research partners are cooperating closely."
It appears this project was mainly requested by German industry and from the website seems that it will closely involve industry. It's quite funny though how the story submitter and many commenters here have twisted the facts to make the project sound as socialist as possible!
The story should really fit the facts though rather than the facts fitting the story!