May 05, 2006

What do you think about Quaero, our so-called "Google killer" ?

Posted at 14:55 | | 5 Comments

Quaero, the future european search engine or just a bad idea. Our President, Jacques Chirac, has announced a budget of 250 million € to finance it. For several reasons, and I'll come back to it, I think it is going to be a total failure but I would love to get your thoughts about it, thanks in advance...

EU/government funding may work for things like Airbus, but for web, you need to innovate and be responsive to the community and going in fast cycles. I can't think of a single web project run on such massive government money and consortium which I would call "successful".

Jaanus, May 05, 2006 at 22:27

There are lots of mis-perceptions about project quaero. Francois Bourdoncle addressed many of these in a recent interview with Dan Farber. Link below in case you missed it.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2904

Declan, May 06, 2006 at 10:52

Even with the clarification from Dan Farber's interview, I think the Quaero project is a bad idea. There is no shortage of basic research in European universities. What's missing is an environment that supports turning research into applications that can be commercialised. It would be much better if the money were invested in ways of making it easier to start and build new companies in France.

But clearly that is not really Chirac's primary objective. He's really only interested in "scoring points" -- no matter how fruitless and at what monetary costs -- in his personal cultural battle with the US. It's a shame he's using real taxpayer money to do it.

maxbley, May 08, 2006 at 18:05

thanks for your comments !

Loïc Le Meur, May 08, 2006 at 23:05

I concur with Jaanus.

Still, that 250 million Euros will pay for a few chateaux for some very lucky ministers ;-)

hugh macleod, May 09, 2006 at 10:29

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Welcome to my blog. Based in San Francisco, I am an entrepreneur and a blogger. I just started my fifth startup, Seesmic, a community driven video social software. Here is what TechCrunch says about it.

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