European Search Squabbles

January 11, 2007: Google may well stay on its perch a little longer after a European search project named ‘Quaero’ was left in tatters as the German government withdrew its support and the European Commission redirected its 8.5 million euros to Pharos, a rival search initiative.

With irreconcilable differences over the search project’s ‘technological direction’ blamed for the divorce, the French led multimedia search engine had originally been envisioned to index photos and videos and counteract some of shortcomings of Google. Quaero will now operate as a solely French project.

After Germany’s exit from the project, the European Commission announced it would also be redirecting its funding elsewhere. 8.3 million euros will now be channelled through to Pharos, a search platform using technologies from search vendor, FAST and funding from both private and public sources across Europe and the UK. Germany will concentrate its search efforts on a project called Theseus.