Why France's Google Clone Helps Google Users
from the auf-wiedersehen dept
France has led the charge for a Euro-centric search engine, called Quaero, as part of its ongoing effort to de-anglicize (or de-Americanize, depending on your point of view) the web and stop Google from threatening French culture. Quaero was often described as a European Google, even though it's not at all clear what it really is. Anyhow, the largely undefined effort has recieved a blow after Germany said it's pulling out of the project to focus on an "information and technology" service called Theseus, rather than just a search engine. However, the French say they'll plow ahead with Quaero -- which still isn't likely to make much of dent in Google's status as the leading search engine around the globe. But while projects like Quaero may not be particularly successful in their own right, they do serve a purpose to the wider internet.For instance, it seems fairly questionable if Jimmy Wales and his merry bunch of wiki editors can topple Google. But their work can highlight shortcomings in Google's products -- shortcomings the company will have to address by improving those products, if it hopes to stay on top. Efforts by other groups to create a better search engine, or a better free email program, or whatever else Google makes, help ensure that the web is dynamic and ever-changing. This means Google will have to keep innovating to keep its users satisfied. That, in turn, sets the bar even higher, and thus the virtuous circle of a competitive market keeps rolling. People use Google's products not because it abuses its dominant position, or because of some shady self-promotion. People use them because they're good, and because they like them. It's this quality that's let Google escape all the tipping points that have supposedly prefaced its fall from glory, and it's quality that can only happen with continual improvement and innovation. So, France, even though Quaero will be a big waste of time and money for you, the wider internet (and Google users) say merci for your socialist approach to supporting the free market.
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Now that is a sweet article!
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Taking bets..
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Re: Taking bets..
look that one up
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Re: Re: Taking bets..
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Re: Re: Taking bets..
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brilliant sarcasm there
Another brilliant French-bashing article here today. This web site is losing credibility fast.
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Re: brilliant sarcasm there
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Re: Re: brilliant sarcasm there
Your auto manufacturer example falls flat pretty nasty. The concept of 'local manufacturer' is dead or rapidly fading. Toyota, Honda, GM and Ford, in the auto world anyway, are global and set up local assembly plants and source local and foreign parts regardless of the nation. Saying 'local' is meaningless. For example, where do American Toyota Tundra's come from now? Texas! Banks, financials, pharma, everything is consolidating in precisely the same manner. By your logic, GM in America will be precisely the same as GM in Europe because of some narrow view that American companies only make American-centric products. Multinationals, including Google, tune their products for all their markets. GM models, if you ever care to notice, sold in Europe are often quite different than their American counterparts. In fact, GM seems to make money in most places other than America, strangely enough.
Oh, and, not to mention, bet internet search isn't quite a monopoly. Yahoo, A9, they all have their followers.
Anyway, the main problem is that this new thing was born of government and not of private industry. History is astoundingly against the commercial success of such ventures, as if there was truly a market for such a thing someone looking to make a buck would've already created it.
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Re: Re: Re: brilliant sarcasm there
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French military victories
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TX CHL Training
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Re:
Uh, the WORLD wide web.
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Clarification...
Uhh, yeah, I read that wiki too. You may want to look back even farther to work done at MIT and DARPA starting in the 1960s leading to a system called DARPANET (or ARPANET, I forget). Most serious histories site this as the beginnings of the true internet that the world wide web topology developed in the 1980s in Sweden (CERN) were based on.
BTW, DARPA IS a fully funded arm of the US defense department, not an international organization in any sense of the word.
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Re: Re:
Yeah, I read that wikipedia article too. You may want to look back even farther to work done at MIT and DARPA starting in the 1960s leading to a system called DARPANET (or ARPANET, I forget). Most serious histories site this as the beginnings of the true internet that the WWW topology developed in the 1980s in Sweden (CERN) were based on.
BTW, DARPA IS a fully funded arm of the US defense department, not an international organization in any sense of the word.
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CERN
CERN was in part funded by the US Gov't, but it really is an international effort, no matter what you all want to spin.
When I was there, they were installing Russian-made support structures for the new LHC and the computing infrastructure was being upgraded by HP...
And, BTW, it's in both Switzerland AND France (the tunnels for the particle accelerator cross the border...), so maybe the WWW was invented in France, by a Brit, no less. :-)
It's not (and never has been) in Sweden.
Chris.
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And so we should all suck Google's b.lls.??
If France methods may seem a bit weird from our "free market" standpoint, France project (www.exalead.com) is yet another startup that aims at taking over Google like all the Silicon Valley super stealth and ambitious start ups that everybody (including Techrcrunch et al) is raving about.
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