The World is Flat. India and China are advancing. Iceland is kicking tail on broadband penetration.
World leaders are falling over themselves to preach innovation and competitiveness.
It's all a very serious global battle for who will prosper in the next economic era. And, in tech policy world there's an endless cacophony of competitiveness doom and gloom. Sometimes we just need bearable moments of lightness.
Thanks goodness then for the French. As EE Times (and many others) reported this week:
President Jacques Chirac of France announced Tuesday (April 25) a 2 billion euro (about $2.5 billion) plan to back a series of projects including one on a Franco-German search engine intended to rival Google.
The search engine's name is to be Quaero said Chirac. (It's Latin for "I search for.")
Yet, Chirac will likely be searching for a long time to find a French Google-killer. Because it doesn't and won't exist. As search-industry blogger John Battelle explains today:
...If all you had to go by was Google results, chances are you'd be confused in your search to figure out what Quaero was all about... Other news outlets seem to think Quareo is in fact a real search engine - albeit one with a multimedia focus...
That's what I thought, and in response I said that it was a deeply dumb idea. But turns out, we were all responding to the wrong thing.
Sure, Chirac seems to think he's funding a European competitor to Google, but it turns out, eh...not so much. Chirac "doesn't even know what a mouse is," (Francois) Bourdoncle told me (he is the CEO and co-founder of Exalead, a leading European enterprise search company and partner in Quaero). (The Guardian today was even harsher, wondering if Chirac "had been sniffing a little too much camembert.")
So what is he funding? Well, according to Bourdoncle, there will be no single Quaero site. Instead, Quaero is a program, a long term effort to spur various European competitors toward creating better search related technologies. Participants will share R&D, for example, as well as become each other's customers. In other words, this is a government funded attempt at pulling together a keiretsu of sorts.
Not exactly a European Google killer, I commented. Nope, Bourdoncle responded, and attempting to do that would be a pretty stupid move.
The French are actually doing pretty well in IPTV and Video-on-Demand thanks to decent broadband penetration rates. So, let's not get too cocky about this seemingly mangled effort by Chirac to be down with the kids as he takes last licks in managing his own legacy. But, still, thanks for making us feel good about the Silicon Valley innovation engine for at least a day.
It's always a relief when someone with obvuois expertise answers. Thanks!
Posted by: Filipe | February 16, 2013 at 01:46 AM