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.'"

Anything you can do I can do better...

[jo7hs2]

Welcome to the great technological pissing war.

January 16, 2011

[XorNand]

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.

That's great but

[Anonymous Coward]

what does it have to do with Apple?

Real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The real reason is to filter out certain results on the query "French Military History".

French search results?

[HugePedlar]

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.

Why not Gögel?

[Joseph_V]

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 /.)

Wow

[ScaryFroMan]

I'm usually not one to say that Slashdot is slow, but geeze, SNL got it first.

Something like its a search engine that after you enter in a query, it rudely refuses.

The Latin pedant steps in...

[tibbetts]

'Quaero' (Latin for 'to search')

No, it's Latin for 'I search'. The author should have Googled it [google.com].

Re:Quaero.com taken

[Xemu]

Check out http://www.quaero.com/ [quaero.com] [quaero.com] - its a marketing company from Charlotte, North Carolina.

And they're pretty damn good at viral marketing if they even get the President of France to advertise for them.

I had also heard...

[Loco3KGT]

that France was looking to invent a "circular transportation facilitation device." Could I get someone to confirm that?

Quaero?

[nekoniku]

Sounds delicious! I'll have two, no onions.

Re:January 16, 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely:

"26th of April 2006, Google declares war on France

  27th of April 2006, France surrenders and hands over presidency to Larry Page"

Re:Real reason

[Compuser]

In that case, why involve Deutsche Telekom? Or rather, why did
Deutsche Telekom get involved?

Re:Erm, vapourware anyone?

[general_re]

...and, erm, that's it.

Well, not exactly. If the EU is going to be shitting out money like a broken slot machine, it remains for you and I to figure out how we can get a piece of this. I'm certain that, given the proper funding, I can help them solve the technical obstacles before them However, for deeply complicated reasons (it's complicated) much of my research will need to be conducted in places like Bali and the Bahamas and so forth.

New search engine capitulates

[wardk]

I understand the new French search engine has already surrendered to the German engine.

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

[CptNerd]

All Capitalist Warmongering "companies" are Running-dog Lackeys of the Imperialist Western Military-Industrial Complex.

Boy, you sure didn't pay enough attention in Dialectics, huh?

Re:January 16, 2011

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Google's stock subsequently plummeted 73% on expectations that it will surrender all of its technology and market share to Microsoft.

Re:January 16, 2011

[jnaujok]

You mispelled "whine".

Oh, am I going to get nailed for this one...

Re:January 16, 2011

[Lemmy Caution]

You know what the biggest irony of France-bashing is? More than the historical inaccuracies, it's the fact that of all the European countries, the French as a culture tend to be more fond of Americans than anywhere else. Personally, I think it's the French who understand the best features of the American psyche better than any other Europeans do. (The English certainly don't.) And both the US and France are in some sense post-revolutionary republics.

It's really sad - Americans just don't get that they are slowly alienating what is, in many senses (if not in foreign policy), their closest friends in the world.

Re:Anything you can do I can do better...

[TuringTest]

And unlike the corporate-run project, it won't be readily apparent exactly what the objectives are because you can't easily see where the profit is going (or coming from, for that matter).

Uh? How do you see where the money is coming from in a corporation? Care to share your source? Do you have millionare friends?