Europe Building Search engine

[mooret]

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.'"

[abbeyvet]

Why do I think that a search engine created by a group of governments and major TelCos is just not going to be what the world has been waiting for? Can you just imagine the meetings? The bureaucracy?

[larryhatch]

I wish them luck, but they missed out on quaero.com.
Some marketing outfit in North Carolina registered that.

Maybe they can try quaero.eu or some such. -Larry

[shallow]

Can you just imagine the meetings? The bureaucracy?

And the taxes!

Ah, France.

Here's an update:

[#*$!.com...]

Not sure this link will work but, according to #*$!.com:

French technology firm Thomson has withdrawn the Quaero project website after a barrage of interest from people followed French President Chriac's portrayal of Quaero as a Google challenger.

Maybe it isn't time to sell Google and cry quietly into a raspberry smoothie after all.

Chirac touted Thomson's search technology project as a challenger to Google and Yahoo; "For that, we will launch a European search engine, Quaero," he said. Quickly thereafter interest grew dramatically in Quaero's workings.

How to meet that challenge? Provide more information? Place a FAQ on the site? Nope. Instead, Thomson has imposed a "news blackout," InfoWorld reported:

The scrutiny was apparently too much for Thomson's chairman, Frank Dangeard, who imposed a "news blackout" Thursday on Thomson's media staff and ordered the project's Web site, at [thomson.net...] to be taken offline. "There's been a lot of noise and our chairman decided we should stop making any comments until a more official press event," said Thomson spokesman Philippe Paban.

It doesn't appear Quaero will reappear anytime soon, and probably not as a publicly available search engine online either. Technology behind the project has to be developed, with work on it waiting for division between project teams, the report said.

[jmccormac]

Typical state monopoly telco thinking. The first thing it gets wrong is the the branding and name. While it might sound all nice, classical and very Latinate in French or the Romance languages, it sounds downright bloody stupid in English. Say the word "quaero" with a broad Irish accent and it sounds like you are talking about some gay South American cowboy or something. It would be easier for these bozos to have such a googlekiller taken seriously if people didn't fall around laughing at the domain they'd chosen. Gobsh1tes of the highest order! :)

Regards...jmcc