p2p news / p2pnet: French President Jacques Chirac maybe unsure about the fate of p2p in France, but he’s quite definite about the need for a European search engine to take on American companies.

With that in mind, companies such as Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are reportedly working on the ‘Quaero’ (Latin for ‘to search’) search engine, says Digital Media Asia.

It’ll be much more than a typical search engine and will, “provide an array of multimedia tools for identifying and indexing images, sound and text,” says the story. “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.”

Is it that Google and Yahoo are the only games in town in the European view? MSN Search wasn’t even mentioned by the French president when he listed the “American giants” competing with France’s tech industry, observes the Seattle Times.

“We must meet the global challenge of the American giants Google and Yahoo!,” Jacques Chirac says the story, quoting the Associated Press. “Today the new geography of knowledge and cultures is being drawn. Tomorrow, that which is not available online runs the risk of being invisible to the world,” the French president said.

And as Digital Media Asia notes:

“Other European projects are currently underway to compete with the US’ and Japan’s technological dominance. The EU recently launched the first satellite of the Galileo constellation, which will eventually provide a navigation system to rival the US’ Global Positioning System (GPS). Also, French broadcasters hope to launch CFII this year, an international satellite TV news channel aimed at competing with CNN.”

Bertelsmann, the BMG part of Sony BMG, is apparently set to lead the German end of the project, says the Financial Times, going on:

“Funding on the French side of up to €150m (about $182,002,165) will come from the new Agency for Industrial Innovation, set up on the recommendation of Jean-Louis Beffa, chairman of Saint-Gobain, the glass and ceramics group. Thomson, the media services and equipment group, will lead the French team, along with the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

“The formation of the German team was stalled by the German elections but the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology on Friday will assemble potential members to a meeting in Berlin. Heinrich von Pierer, the chairman of Siemens who is close to Angela Merkel, German chancellor, is playing the same co-ordinating role on the German side as Mr Beffa.”

Also See:
p2p in France – Chirac on p2p file sharing, January 12, 2006
Digital Media Asia – European companies develop search engine to rival Google, January 16, 2006
Seattle Times – Mon Dieu! Microsoft snubbed in France, January 16, 2006
Financial Times – Bertelsmann set to head Quaero internet project, January 16, 2006

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 7:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 2628 times