Monday, January 16, 2006

European companies develop search engine to rival Google: In his New Year's address outlining his administration's plans for 2006, French President Jacques Chirac focused on plans for a European search engine to rival US internet companies such as Yahoo and Google. Some of the top tech labs in France and Germany are reportedly working on the 'Quaero' (Latin for 'to search') search engine. 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. (Via Slashdot.) GLENDOWER. I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe HOTSPUR. Why so can I, or so can any man: But will they come, when you doe call for them? Henry IV, Part 2 OK, so that's a cheap shot. Maybe. All of those capabilities are possible with current technology. The challenge is to deliver them at high enough quality at low enough cost. Europe does have great technological successes developed by government-sponsored consortia, like GSM, Airbus, and Ariadne. But I've not seen comparable successes in consumer-oriented products and services. Maybe these need creative freedom from bureaucratic management much more than they need large-scale coordination and investment. Update:Newsfactor reports that In France, government funding for Quaero of up to 150 million euros (US$182 million) will come from the country's new Agency for Industrial Innovation. If memory serves me right, Google's $85M of venture capital were more than enough to get them to profitability. Talking about such a huge budget as $150M euro upfront may not help building a lean and mean operation capable of competing with Google and Yahoo in equal terms. 6:17:57 PM