The French government has announced a $2.5 billion plan backing a series of projects, including a Franco-German search engine called Quaero, intended to rival Google. "Quaero" means "I search for" in
Latin, and France and the rest of Europe are searching for a way to compete in the booming new media market. History says that government-backed organizations don't typically compete well in an
open-market; nevertheless, France has declared that competing with Google and others is essential for the country's economic future. Quaero, one of six government-backed projects given the green-light
with this recent round of funding, aims to develop multimedia search software (not text-based) the general public can use in any language on any Internet-enabled device. It's being built by major
French and German companies, Thomson, France Telecom, and Exalead.
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