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.'"

Quaero.eu

[Anonymous Coward]

In Europe, ".com" is not ubiquitous. Instead, the common format is to use the .xx country-based TLD. Or, if you are going to be EU-wide, as suggested in the article, then you would be Quaero.eu and not some silly .com

Additionally, who knows what kind of alternative algorithm tweak they might give results. For example, boosting .xx results slightly over .com results. Or perhaps boosting links which get .xx links TO them instead of *all* links (translation: what is more important to Europeans, as valued by links, ranks higher than generic-global links). Or perhaps they'll give greater wait to .eu based clicks as votes.

There are any number of ways to adjust the complex search result forumlas. Google is *not* the only game in town, even if they have been the best at it so far.

Don't playa-hate, Googlefanbois! See what Quaero comes up with, first. Hell, even dare to TRY it! :o

Vive le concurrence!

"...making plans for..."

[Weaselmancer]

igital 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.

"Making plans for" is a long, long way from delivering anything. I'm betting that once they start to realize the scope of what they're suggesting, they will change their tune a bit. Or at least scale back the idea somewhat. A google that understands audio and video?

Good luck though, because after all it's saying "why not" that makes change happen - but I think they'll be surprised when they realize the magnitude of their undertaking. Underestimating Google is a classic internet blunder.

This is politics.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Europe wanted a better search engine, they should look to see if they have any kids as bright as Larry Page or Sergey Brin or David Filo and Jerry Yang.

Instead they've got a consortium of bloated bureaucracies - both corporate and political ones. This approach has absolutely ZERO chance of a technological success; so it 100% belongs in the politics camp.

And I'm serious. French declarations and large telecoms are no place to create the next Google any more than SBC or TimeWarner is. A couple college kids will blow them away simply becasue the college kids don't have to put up with the bureaucracy.

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

[massivefoot]

Well Galileo is important for two key reasons. Firstly, it's far more accuarte then GPS (on the order of 1m rather than 4-5m). Secondly, GPS is controlled by the Pentagon, they can switch it off (or, more likely, encrypt the signals so they can only be recieved by military personel) whenever they like. Galileo will be under civilian control. There was also talk of it including a relay system for distress signals.

Anyway, back on-topic, "Quaero" is intended to be able to search images and sound. I assume that doesn't just mean search text associated with them, as Google does. Searching an actual image or sound is a very complex procedure to do on the scale of the internet. If you want to see where this technology is at the moment try http://shape.cs.princeton.edu/search.html [princeton.edu]. It's fun to play with, and maybe even practical for searching, say, an engineering database, but it's a quite primative technology. So no, they aren't second rate, nor doing what "the Americans have done".

How much will they have to block.

[DAldredge]

Since most of Europe has 'hate speech' laws, how much of the net will this search engine be forced to block?

Re:Why?

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

Also, just because the government says that it should "understand" spoken audio, I'm pretty sure that no existing technology could even come close...

Isn't the lack of existing technology usually the reason one funds research?

Re:Why?

[bombadillo]

If there's a true need for it, won't the market fulfil the need [google.com]?

Not always. Examples would be the Interstate Highway system and TVA. The market generally won't carry large scale farsighted neccesities. The highway system and TVA served as a primer for private commerce in the US which we are enjoying today. Some projects have to be done by the Government when private interestes can't deliver. Quaero obviously is not one of them as several private companies are in the search engine business.

You all laugh, but...

[SuperKendall]

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

A funny question on the face of it but a very serious one if you think about it. What is to stop a government built search engine from tweaking the results just a bit to elimate embarrasment?

I think governments have no business in entreprises that involve shaping what media citizens see.

And for those paranoid about NSA apying, just why do you think they aim to parse the audio in the first place? Hint; It's not primarily so that you can find every audio file in the world that mentions "Tea and Crumpets" in ten seconds flat.

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

[dargndorp]

And lets not forget the direct German help[2] in creating Iraqi chemical weapons.

Let's not get carried away here. While there was substantial help coming to Iraq for their chemical weapons program, this was never done by Germany's government. Rather it was the case of several companies illegally exporting such goods and facilitating such deals.

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

[atrizzah]

Agreed. In light of this and the Galileo story, I'm having trouble seeing how spending government money to reinvent everything America has is a good idea.