• International Herald Tribune , Wednesday, March 26, 2008 1 PM

Critics from both inside and outside the EU have raised concerns about Quaero, the mammoth, European search intelligence research project that's finally getting off the ground. Most of the criticism stems from the fact that various EU governments are funding this push to create a "Google-killer"--France, for example, just got the OK to invest more than $150 million over five years--and that the efforts may actually just be too little, too late.

Not so, say the project's research leaders. "Quaero participants say that their project has been misunderstood by the public, that it is not the recipient of unfair subsidies, and that it is not even a search engine," writes Victoria Shannon. The consortium (which includes 23 companies and research organizations) will actually be researching and developing prototypes for multimedia and multilingual search tools--and the fruits of their labors will be available for anyone who wants to license them, even Google.

As for Quaero's futility, François Bourdoncle founder of French-based search engine Exalead, says that the project is valid and necessary, given the current domination of the search space by U.S. companies.

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