Checking a data or fact? Planning a tourist vacation? Want information on a disease, a hotel or restaurant, a business event, pet care? What Internet users normally do? They Google the information. With around 85 percent of the search-engine market, including that of Germany, Google has become the market leader.
Now European Union is concerned about US hegemony in the worldwide search engine market. They aim to develop an Eurocentric alternative to the dominant Google.
European Union have launched a project under the name Quaero (Latin for ‘I seek’) to compete with the American behemoth. The project is headed by an Internet information company called exalead.com. The Quaero project is a coalition of 23 companies led by French technology giant Thomson.
Now, the European Union's competition watchdog has approved €99 million (£76 million) of French state aid for the consortium. This is also a fact that Google spent $7.5 million (6.3 million euros) on one lab with 10 students in its development stages. Can Quaero project become that tough? Also, the US search engine behemoth continues to spend $400 million annually on research and development. Can Quaero compete with the Google competency?
Anyway, the endeavour of EU is worth watching and the consortium plans to make the Quaero engine available for personal computers, mobile phones, televisions and other media platforms.
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