EU to Develop Search Engine 460
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.'"
Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Also, just because the government says that it should "understand" spoken audio, I'm pretty sure that no existing technology could even come close (<sarcasm>just look at the wonderful translation tools</sarcasm>).
Nothing to see (Score:5, Informative)
So basically, a bunch of European telecoms companies are discussing how to compete with Google. And this is news why? Nothing to see here.
Re:Real reason (Score:2, Informative)
I would have thought it would have met with approval by our friends over the pond.
I am Scots - so naturally biased because of the Auld Alliance (not mention Val D'Isere [valdisere.com]).
Re:January 16, 2011 (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia has more details. [wikipedia.org]
How's your glass house holding up? (Score:0, Informative)
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1223-11.htm [commondreams.org]
Now tell the whole story or STFU.
Not an EU project (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A few points to the EU powermongers... (Score:2, Informative)
My first source for this is in German, but you may use Googles (
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2
The original article is from the NYT - you may have an account there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.
BTW: Looks also intersting: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George
Re:You mean india surely (Score:4, Informative)
It grew [yahoo.com] 16% last year. Instead, let's talk about Microsoft and Google. Those two companies compare favorably to most Europeon nations, on their own. But let's not silly facts get in the way of your ramblings.
2. I rather they spend it on this then on a war.
Awesome. Here's a bit of logic for you. "This is a good idea because I don't like America and they spend money on a war. This costs money, therefore it is good." That's grade A bullshit.
3. Perhaps a search engine that does not bow to the Chinese goverment in the name of the almighty dollar?
Do we really need to talk about the bullshit the French government does for it's almighty Franc? How about Nazi references? Be honest, wouldn't you be bitching just as much if google -hadn't- respected the wishes of China, and then you could say "Imperiliast America and google imposiing it's will on other nations for the almighty dollar". This is your best steaming pile, yet.
4. Yeah, because the top cellphone company is european and all your pc's are made in the US. No I rather we keep our model. So do the majority of EU voters. EU socialist, US capatalist. Move to location of your choice.
This is the best one yet. Clearly you refer to Nokia [nokia.com]. A company that is #1 because it competes in the free market with no government benefits at all. And this is your evidence supporting "socialism". Isn't that... ironic? Err no, wait... It's just plain wrong.
Re:You mean india surely (Score:4, Informative)
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google/ [harvard.edu]
http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.ph
Notice:
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=nazi&btnG=Goo
Ergebnisse 1 - 10 von ungefähr 28.300.000 für nazi. (0,03 Sekunden)
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&ie=ISO-8859-1&q
Résultats 1 - 10 sur un total d'environ 28 300 000 pour nazi. (0,05 secondes)
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en
Results 1 - 10 of about 29,900,000 for nazi [definition]. (0.04 seconds)
See the search count numbers? Don't blame it on language. Lets search for Nazi in
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=Nazi&btnG=%CF%EE
Nazi 29,900,000 1 - 10 (0.05 )
Neat, huh?
Keep in mind, unless you specify google to focus on your language, the search results should be _exactly_ the same across local sites. Except if they tamper with the results, which both Google and Yahoo do for Germany and France.
Research on Similar experiences with china:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/ [harvard.edu]
Sadly, you can't test the Chinese version from outside China. cyberlaw sometimes has a proxy running in China that will allow you to test it, but its currently down. A google filters those results based upon whether your IP block is Chinese or not.
Here's someone's test. You don't have to believe it, I guess:
http://www.dit-inc.us/report/google200409/google.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_blocke
Interestingly enough, looks like our Congress criters may be trying to change this behavior:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6026733.html [zdnet.com]
hate speech laws (Score:1, Informative)
Hypocrites de luxe. "Hate speech" laws are by themselves anathema to freedom, period. You either have free speech, or you do not. One man's "hate speech" is another man's "I'm defending myself in an argument and making a point". One person labeled a "terrorist" thinks of themselves as a "freedom fighter".
Slippery slope and you are on it and are sliding fast and you don't have any brakes. Good Luck with your political correctness, because it will come home to haunt you eventually when YOU run afoul of some bogus "hate" law.
Re:Anything you can do I can do better... (Score:2, Informative)
OK, so you can't be 100 percent sure where the money is coming from in a corporation, but a publicly held company must document its revenue and expenses, and generally they break the source of revenue down by product type or area of business. These filings are required by the SEC (in the US), and even more detailed information is provided in the prospectus that is normally examined by stockholders. Failure to meet these guidelines will result in heavy fines from the SEC, loss of confidence by investors, and perhaps revocation of business license -- The whole Enron scandal has helped to make it much more difficult to deceive investors. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but in case you haven't noticed, most scandals you hear about lately have only been going on for a short time, as opposed to the multi-year buildup of deceit at Enron. -- In contrast, the controls put in place for a non-profit organization are much less rigorous, particularly one which includes government involvement.