Europe's Quaero - a wannabe Google project

All big search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN are American and French President Chirac isn't really pleased about that.

So he has united a bunch of companies like Thomson, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom to develop an European search engine to meet the global challenge of American giants Google and Yahoo.

The project has a really weird name, Quaero, which means "to search" in latin. I don't know what you think about this name but I think it's a really weird name which isn't easy to remember nor to type-in.

Additionally, many Quaero domains like Quaero.com, Quaero.net, Quaero.org are already registered by other persons. So it's not really a smart plan to choose this name as I'm sure the owners of the domains I just mentioned will get lots of people looking for the search engine. My guess is that they will use Quaero.eu, but still it would have been smart to register the name under all major top level domains.

Designers insist that Quaero will not just be a search engine but a set of tools for translating, identifying and indexing images, sound and text.

The technology would work with all platforms computer desktops, mobile devices and even televisions and be sold to television companies, filmmakers, post-production facilities and anyone who creates or uses audiovisual content, according to France's electronics giant Thomson.

"Yes, it's highly ambitious," said Jean-Luc Moullet, who oversees the Quaero project at Thomson. "There's nothing to compare it to."

More details can be read at ABC News.