75 million reasons why QUAERO is no Google-killer

happygeek 0 355 Views

Mark Furber, MD of a UK strategic online marketing company called , is warning anyone who might be listening that the publicly funded QUAERO European search engine research project is doomed to failure. Expensive failure at that: Furber says that the project, hyped as at the Euro equivalent of Google (don't we already have one of those, and it is called Google) will cost £75 million before vanishing into the ether. Something that Furber says is ridiculous as Internet technology will have significantly changed by 2013.

Some, of course, might accuse Furber of doing nothing more than a little strategic online marketing of his own company here with this press release. Certainly some of the claims made bear a little closer inspection. First there is the small matter of that money, European yes but not in the sense that everyone in Europe is contributing. It turns out that QUAERO was actually awarded £75 million by the French government, something the press release itself admits. Then there is the claim that "a publicly funded project like this has no chance of overtaking Google, even if that money was spent on development over one year, not five." The truth is, of course, that nobody could have predicted the rise to greatness in such a short period of time with Google itself. But it happened. Sure, the landscape is different today, but when it comes to Internet technologies anything is still possible, if not probable in this case. Furber insists that "the only way to create a viable European rival to Google is to use the money to fund research at one of its existing major rivals, such as Yahoo!."

However, the founders of the QUAERO project are equally insistent that it isn't a search engine, it isn't meant to be a Google killer at all. The 23 companies working together on QUAERO consider it to be a research co-operative that is investigating new search technologies that could be used by companies in the future. Which is a different kettle of fish as far as I am concerned, although a very expensive one at that.

Furber is having none of it though, concluding that "even if that is true, it doesn't matter. This project has no chance of producing anything useful for European businesses, and is a total waste of money."

Dani AI

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A short, up-to-date summary that adds missing context to ’s post.

QUAERO started as a high-profile Franco‑German initiative but quickly became a French‑led R&D programme rather than a single consumer search product. Germany effectively pulled out in late 2006 to pursue its own Theseus project, and the European Commission later authorised State aid of €99 million to the French consortium on 11 March 2008. Those two facts explain why the project’s scope and governance were never the same as a lean, product‑driven startup. ()

What the programme actually produced: research papers, prototype modules for multimedia indexing (audio/video/image transcription and metadata), a handful of prototypes and patent filings, and some industrial transfer. Exalead supplied much of the public demo technology and later became a commercial asset (acquired by Dassault Systèmes), while parts of the work found use in cultural and archival projects. The Quaero programme formally wound down at the end of 2013 with research outputs and spin‑offs rather than a mass‑market search competitor. (en.wikipedia.org)

Practical takeaway tied to the original debate: critics who argued that a short public cash injection would not “buy” a Google were right in spirit — building a global, consumer search champion requires sustained product focus, distribution and commercial strategy beyond lab research. At the same time, calling the whole endeavour a total waste ignores concrete research results, IP and commercial spin‑outs that emerged. For policymakers or project sponsors today, the lesson is to pair public R&D funding with a clear route to commercialisation and a single accountable product team if a consumer offering is the goal. (fr.wikipedia.org)

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