EU Gives France Permission To Waste Even More Money On Mythical Google Killer
from the yo-quaero-taco-bell dept
It's been nearly two years since we pointed out that the EU's "Quaero" project appeared to be nothing more than a scam to trick clueless bureaucrats into funnelling tons of money into private companies hoping they would somehow create a "Google-killer." There were no plans. There was no website. There was no technology. There was merely a bunch of random companies all saying they would do something vague, if only the government gave them money. Well, the EU has now granted the wish, giving France permission to distribute $152 million to a bunch of companies. Note, again, that they're not giving this money to some startup that thinks it has a Google killer. In fact, everyone admits that the various companies involved all have divergent interests. In other words, this money is going into a black hole where it will be spent on whatever each company wants to spend it on. The idea that a Google-killer will emerge is laughable. Just the fact that it's been many years since the project was first proposed and they're just getting around to funding it now should give you a sense of how backwards this plan is. You don't create a Google-killer by announcing such plans, getting a bunch of big companies to line up for a handout and then taking years to actually give out way more money than is needed.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: boondoggle, eu, france, google killer, quaero, search engine
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Hilarious
You forgot to mention how much it cost to make the decision to throw away 152 million? How many people on how many committees discussed this for how many years?
It's a wonder to me that Europe still has a functioning economy at all.
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Re: Hilarious
But don't let facts stop the usual EU bashing
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Re: Re: Hilarious
so there's a lot of things wrong here but the first thing to come to mind is not exactly the way the EU function.
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Re: Re: Hilarious
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There is absolutely no way that this is unintentional, or that no one involved has noticed it. Maybe the EU has a sense of humour.
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Re:
Thats probably because your an American (I'm guessing), and therefore assume everybody watches baseball and speaks English (you do realise English comes from England right?).
How many countries in Europe speak English as a first language? Remember that Europe and the EU are not like the United States, try working out (or looking up) all the different country names and languages before you start to make smart comments.
What else does Quaero sound like? I'm guessing off the top of my head here ... Query?
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from http://www.epractice.eu/document/482
"Unlike the existing search engines, Quaero would allow users to conduct searches by entering images (“query images”) and audio components (“query sound clips”), and not just keywords.
Through a process known as “image miming”, a software (supplied by LTU Technologies) that recognizes colors and shapes would be able to identify pictures and videos containing images similar to the query image. Moreover, a technique called “keyword propagation” would also be used: when Quaero would find a description-less image containing some or all elements of a properly labeled image, it would append the description from the labeled image to the unlabeled one thus ensuring faster searches. "
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Re:
It looks like Europe needs to learn from the US how to play the great American game of "catch up".
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Mike's Slanty View
All of this aside, the EU is screwed up, France sucks and the other posts are right, "Quaero" does sound a lot like "Queer."
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Re: Mike's Slanty View
I have no problem with investors funding competitors to Google.
That's what this is though. This is pouring a ton of gov't money into an ill-defined project with a bunch of random large companies. No one has created a comeptitor to Google. None of them seem to have a real plan to do so. They're all just asking for gov't handouts.
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European Projects, Schmeuropean projects
In all companies I have seen, getting a European Project means a hefty lumpsum with no strings attached about the way you spend it. Sometimes they ask for a report so you get an intern to spend a couple of days to write something short and send it over. Every 2 years or so you ask for more money and regardless of what you have done earlier (nobody ever read the reports you sent) you usually get it.
The EU has granted itself the power to fund tech projects without ever thinking about getting tech-savvy people on the payroll to go get the results. In the end, most money is spent on R&D projects that would never get privately funded otherwise, so all is not lost. Still, the feeling of waste is enormous.
Do not think this issue is only related to tech projects. About 15 years ago the EU provided large funds to Greece for their tourist industry to learn English to make them more attractive. Most hotel owners pocketed the funds and bought more land or other hotels, their staff never saw a cent of it. As a result you now get more luxurious hotels and wealthier hotel owners exploiting people who do not speak better English. The country as a whole got a little bit richer so that foreign tourists have better ways to spend their euros. Same feeling of waste and total lack of control.
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King of the Trolls
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Re: King of the Trolls
Something tells me no one with any intelligence is going to take you seriously.
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Re: Re: King of the Trolls
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Re: Re: Re: King of the Trolls
Let's see...you've posted what is essentially a personal attack that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed.
To further educate you: my responding to your posts is called "feeding a troll" and is generally a pointless endeavor, because trolls have no interest in contributing anything useful to a conversation. Instead, their sole purpose is to derail conversations with irrelevant material.
Since responding to you is pointless, I won't be doing it again.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: King of the Trolls
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Re: Hilarious
what's wrong with letting some start-up do the work? I would even venture to say that any start-up that starts from the government is dead on arrival - the EU is almost antithetical to everything that is start-up.
And if you are looking to give money away to business just for the heck of it - why not do it by raffle so that it will be really fair?
Now that's an idea - the raffle could be held once a week and televised across Europe.Everybody would be interested because their businesses will be involved. Ratings will be great and so will revenue from ads.
Next step - establish a commission to study the feasibility of distributing money through a weekly raffle. the commission can commission studies to discover the cost of the commission, the cost of the raffle, the benefits of a weekly raffle as opposed to a monthly raffle, the eligibility of various parties in the raffle, the projected effect on other raffles and on the states economies,taxation on winnings from the raffle - yes or no and how much...well, you get the picture.
Sooner or later the EU is going to grind to a halt.
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Wait... are we really upset that the EU is wasting
X
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Too bad - at one time - France was it's own country.
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Pouring Money into Black Hole
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Hmmm...
Bureacracies throw away money like its toiletpaper in any country - in this case the EU... doesn't mean its going to come to a "grinding halt".
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Qua Ero?
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Re: Qua Ero?
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Although, learning how to play "catch up", I dunno. Maybe you could teach us how to borrow more money from the Asians and then spend it on houses and guns? That seems like a good trick - oh wait, it isn't.
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Re:
I applaud the money wasted by europe's bureaucrats. Tax payers in europe deserve to have their money wasted.
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Re: Re:
Yes, there was a very long drawn out process in the UN. Now for bonus points, name the country that ignored it all.
I will agree with you on one thing, it's not a vague reason the invasion happened. Everyone knows it was done for oil. Shame it's failed, and has no chance of success.
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That aside, this sounds like the same thing Google's been working on for about a decade. They've already mentioned searching via mobile phone cameras -- snap a picture of a restaurant, get a review of the food, etc -- as well as searching by voice and audio clips.
I think Quaero will probably come to fruition about 5 years after Google perfects the very same technology. Honestly. And even then it would be horribly inferior.
Look at how sophisticated Google Maps is compared to MapQuest, and realize that that whole tool is peripheral to Google's goals... Then take a gander at Android, News, Finance...
There will never be a Google killer. When your company operates by allowing their employees to do basically anything they want, decorates the office with giant colored balls, and stuffs the smartest people in the world full of free sushi... Let's face it, they're going to do amazing things at terrifying speeds.
Google is the new Xerox PARC, except they're turning a huge profit around it.
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Re: Katie
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Anyone know what, if anything, was presented? Or did the merger effectively eliminate the scheduled presentation?
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