The Quaero project already has 26 partners

According to foreign media reports, a French government-funded technology Alliance Quaero Thursday launched a multimedia search tool to challenge the U.S. search engine Google's monopolistic position.

Quaero, which was established two years ago, shows software that converts colloquial language to written text, software that synchronizes e-books with audio books, and an automatic translator that translates German into English (but cannot be translated into French).

"If you want to respond to the American technology invasion, then you have to master your own technology," said Peter Van Pieter van der Quaero, chief coordinator of the Union. "But he says the aim is to create specialized applications that encourage research in the field rather than replace existing search engines. "Quaero does not create search engines in the name of quaero.com, but for sharing resources," he said. ”

The project was launched 4 years ago by the French and German governments, when French President Jacques Chirac said they would "meet the global challenges posed by Google and Yahoo". This project is named Quaero, and Latin means "I am looking for".

The idea behind it is that internet users will increasingly search for audio and video content, just as they now do with text searches. The project is led by the government and not by the private sector, as is the case with France's "controlled" business. Mr Chirac even thinks it is similar to the Airbus aircraft project. Airbus aircraft manufacturers include France and Germany.

But Germany slipped out of the program in 2007 because Germany did not agree with France's pursuit of multimedia search, rather than a better text-search program. Since then France launched a 199 million-euro (242.6 million-dollar) 5-year plan in 2008, half of which came from the French government, and the other half by the private sector, which includes the French telecoms and media technology Group Technicolor Corporation.

The Quaero project already has 26 partners, most of them French enterprises and universities, which share the research tasks. The French government wants Quaero to breed a number of small French technology companies. So far, the software is just for the French market. Many other software is still under development, some of which will be commercially available.

Two years ago Google also launched a similar project Google Audio indexing (Google Audio index), but has not yet come up with a software. A Google spokeswoman did not immediately comment on the French action.