

Japan's Government to Waste $130 Million Fighting Google - staunch
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3046d5c-5b1d-11dc-8c32-0000779fd2ac.html

======
dpapathanasiou
Competing against Google is not necessarily foolish, but doing it under the
auspices of a large government program is.

~~~
omouse
Didn't France try this a few years ago?

~~~
neilc
Yeah: France and Germany started Quaero for a mere $2.5 billion, which seems
similarly doomed to failure. Germany recently pulled out and have started
their own project, "Theseus".

------
cstejerean
I'm not sure if I buy that Japan is trying to fight Google. That might very
well be what the author of the article understood from the whole thing but to
me it seems they are simply trying to support a move by Japanese companies
into services. Adding decent search to a car navigation system is not exactly
competing with Google. As long as they don't try to make a general purpose
search engine I'm not sure if they are really competing with Google, just
making their devices more attractive and differentiated from the replicas that
South Korea and Taiwan are pumping out.

