Ideal Government Europe

23 Sep 2005

EU member states v Google: no contest

Remember when MPs first heard about the Internet in the US and called for a French Internet, a Welsh one, probably a Basque one too?

Now Europe’s governments, freaked out by how good and free Google is, have knee jerked and spent a pile of money launching an online Euro-library. “We’re engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy”, said French President Jacques Chirac about this. “In France, in Europe, it’s our power that’s at stake”. Let’s show them what an intergovernmental steering commitee can achieve, when backed up by a series of working goups.

Which works better, you ask?

Well, Google print is unbelievable. I never asked for it, it cost me nothing, it works very fast and I’m delighted. Euro-lib didn’t find anything for me, just crashed my browser (Mozilla).

Apparently they’re developing a search engine called Quaero- “widely seen as a potential competitor to Google”. Nobody has ever heard of it (although Google turns up several Quaeros, of course). What next? EC-funded Euromaps? Euromail? Euro-Earth (perhaps just restricted to Europe, and called Euro-Euro)?

Would it be too Anglo-centric to ask: “Can I have my tax back now please?”