

Competition for Google: A German Library for the 21st Century - nkurz
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676591,00.html

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mjfern
I am very skeptical of these state sponsored technology ventures. Consider the
"Quaero" project, which was a joint venture between France and Germany to
develop a search engine that rivaled Google. Among other issues, the two
countries could never agree on the overall direction for the project; should
Quaero focus on text-based search or multi-media search? As expected, after
several years of development the two countries ceased cooperating and now
France is apparently pushing forward with the project on its own.

With private enterprise (particularly new ventures), the central concern must
be on creating value for customers and subsequently capturing some of this
value. When government gets involved, the customer always takes a back seat to
politics. This doesn't make for a successful venture.

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danielharan
Why? Because Governments can't ever do anything right?

This is a massive digitization project, with little technical or marketing
risk. If the data is made available with a good license, it could spur a great
deal of competition and value in the private sector.

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VMG
Almost seems like can you can fund anything web-related and call yourself a
Google competitor nowadays

