Schroede
Chirac
The European Commission has approved the French government’s offer of e99 million ($153 million) in state aid to the team hoping to create a European rival to Google.
The somewhat secretive Quaero program involves a consortium of 23 French and German partners, including small and medium-sized software companies and universities, led by French technology giant Thomson.
Announced in April 2005, the brainchild of then-leaders Jacques Chirac of France and Gerhard Schroeder of Germany was intended as a response to the globally dominant American-based search engine.
France and Germany had initially proposed joint commitments of between e1 billion and e2 billion throughout the first five years to Quaero -- which had often been sardonically referred to as the “Google killer” due to the massive difference in R&D budgets between the American company and its wannabe European contender.
However, the new German government under Angela Merkel pulled out in December 2006 after disagreements with France about the project’s fundamental design.
Some German developers have since left Quaero to work on the German government-supported “complementary” project Theseus.
Paris agreed to fund half of the estimated $307.5 million costs for the first five years of Quaero research, pending Brussels’ blessing.
The European Commission announced Tuesday that the Quaero project was “positive ... for the (European) community as a whole.”
Thomson has stated its targeted clients for Quaero are Internet network developers, content distributors and film production studios.
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