Now How Will We Find What We Are Looking for on the Web?

The French government knows what its people need: a new government-funded search engine. The short-sighted Germans, however, after their initial partnership with France on this forward-looking scheme, have now backed out of this plan for European betterment:

Germany and France had initially discussed plans to commit €1 billion to €2 billion, or $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion, over five years to Quaero. The project was to have been paid for by the French and German governments, with contributions from technology companies like Thomson and France Télécom on the west side of the Rhine, and Siemens and Deutsche Telekom to the east.

But never fear, those of you in dire need of a way to find things on the World Wide Web: even if the Merkel regime in Germany has walked away, France will not be discouraged:

French participants in the secretive project, called Quaero, which means "I seek" in Latin, vowed to continue their efforts to develop the search engine, possibly with funding from the European Union.

Full story from the International Herald Tribune. In unrelated news, an obscure American company with the unlikely name "Google" is at a market cap of $145.28 billion.

Hat tip to Manuel Klausner.