PARIS: Almost three years after then-President Jacques Chirac of France introduced Quaero to the world as the next Google-killer, the Internet search project has finally gotten its first funding.
It has also received a fresh wave of criticism, both inside and outside the European Union, for relying on government handouts rather than leaving it to the market to create a viable rival to Google.
"So that's what the EU does with all that Microsoft money," sneered Michael Arrington on TechCrunch, a Silicon Valley Web site, referring to the fines the European Commission has imposed on the software giant in a long-running competition case.
But 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. Instead, the 23 companies and organizations involved will collaborate on researching and creating prototypes for multimedia and multilingual search tools. Whatever results would be licensed to any company interested.
Each of the private participants will match, by a ratio of 2 to 1, the €99 million, or $153 million, in French government funds the European Commission approved this month, for a total of €298 million over the five years of the project.
"It's not that different from some projects in the United States, with public research, academia and private involvement," said Jean-Charles Hourcade, chief technology officer of Thomson, the French video and multimedia company that is leading Quaero.
Hourcade calls Quaero's five different search projects a form of "coopetition," at once competitive and cooperative, similar to how the high-definition digital television standard came about in Europe in the 1990s.
I think they are all market driven," Hourcade said. "They are addressing market needs, and are led by companies that are all market-driven."
The setup mirrors government efforts in Japan, Germany and elsewhere to finance search technology.
Last year, the Japanese Ministry of Trade allocated ¥14 billion to ¥15 billion, or $141 million to $151 million, to a three-year multimedia search project led by Hitachi Consulting and made up of 10 partnerships involving Sony, NEC, Oki Electric, NTT, Toyota and others.
In July, Germany got approval from Brussels to invest €120 million over five years in next-generation search technology in a project called Theseus, involving companies like SAP, Siemens and Bertelsmann. The project broke off from the original Quaero venture two years ago.
Perhaps unexpectedly, at least, from the point of view of Quaero-bashers, some of the companies involved in the project are start-ups themselves, which have toiled for years without government aid, outside the Silicon Valley cocoon, where taking risks is a natural instinct and rewarded with funding.
One of them, Exalead, which specializes in business search engine technology, is one of the few French-born technology companies to compete with Google on any level, and is one of the Quaero project leaders.
Its founder, François Bourdoncle, says there is no shame from a European point of view in taking government funds to drive innovation.
"It's extremely important for the future for Europe to be present in this field," he said. "Since most of the large players are American, it makes sense. Either you're Google, Microsoft or Yahoo and you can do it in-house, or you're not, and so you have to collaborate with people."
Danny Sullivan, who started Search Engine Watch in 1997 and is now editor of the blog Search Engine Land, said some of the reaction to Google's dominance may be overkill.
"I see governments around the world a bit concerned that the U.S. dominates the search industry, although Quaero is much more restricted to multimedia search," Sullivan said. "We may be going through a repeat of the whole Boeing-Airbus situation."
He noted that Thomson used to have a multimedia search engine called SingingFish, which it sold to AOL. "I just have to chuckle," Sullivan said. "I just think, wow, you have to get government funding to do something you used to do?"
The Quaerophiles see a glimmer of hope in the possibility that Google and Microsoft might be distracted by bigger challenges over the next six to 12 months - for Google, its $3.1 billion absorption of DoubleClick, and for Microsoft, its pursuit of Yahoo.
"These guys are so distracted doing so many things and fighting for the ad money that they may very well consider the search problem solved, like Altavista used to," Bourdoncle said, referring to a pioneer of Internet search that was overtaken by Google and others. "There's an opening here when you're thinking 'product' and not just 'technology.' "
Bourdoncle conceded that Quaero would not be able to develop a rival to Google in search-related advertising, the company's most lucrative business. "The scale is just too large for anyone to catch up," he said.
But no one yet dominates in multimedia search, which helps Internet surfers locate videos and other material.
"Search engines will be increasingly important in the future because of the general digitization of every type of content," Hourcade said. "And we have a very, very strong obligation to invest in this area, to pool our thoughts and put on the market as soon as possible competitive technology from European origins."
Bourdoncle isn't worried about not having a Quaero product to market at this point.
"It's not that Quaero aims at creating a new search engine or that Exalead would introduce a new search engine on its Web site," he said. "We would integrate the technology that emerges into our consumer and business search products."
Still, the Quaero funding is public money, something that Google never got.
"If they actually roll out a commercially based search engine that makes money, it is going to raise real fairness issues," Sullivan said. "And yet a lot of people feel that thank goodness we did start Airbus and have this thriving industry and made sure that Europe is strong in aerospace. Maybe that is the kick-start they need."
