Quaero European Search Engine Goals and Plans
Plans for Quaero, which may be housed at Quaero.org although references to Quaero.com (currently a marketing performance firm) are made in documents, have been partially unveiled by Thomson.net as the European Union’s search engine takes its first steps in matching the US run Yahoo, MSN, and Google media search offerings. Quaero, latin for ‘I seek, or to search’ (think QUERY or QUESTION) is set to focus on three major areas; a combined sound, image and video search engine for the general public, professional search applications and audio-visual “heritage” such as historical footage.
The Quaero project has been played up to be a pet project of French President Jacques Chirac who told the media last week “We must take up the challenge posed by the American giants Google and Yahoo,…For that, we will launch a European search engine, Quaero.”
The media hoopla around the event and questions as to the direction of Quaero led to Thomson’s (Thomson.net is leading the Quaero project) chairman, Frank Dangeard, to declare a “news blackout”, which then led to the Quaero project’s website to be taken offline.
A Thomson spokesperson told the media “There’s been a lot of noise and our chairman decided we should stop making any comments until a more official press event”
Thankfully, Google (yes, the US super giant) has the pages cached and some of the press releases are still available, in French.
Here is a rundown from Thomson.net on the mission of Quaero, dubbed Multimedia Content Search Evolution.
Due to multimedia content volume explosion, caused by recent and successive technology breakthroughs, as well as new consumer modes, industry needs to provide new multimedia search solutions.
Although content is everywhere (mobile, networks,…), content becomes less accessible, since “digital” browsing is cumbersome.
Existing solutions do not respond respond to new dimensions of multimedia content and creativity, which require improved infrastructure and breadth of content management & search applications.
The Overview goals on to list the goals of Quaero:
* To facilitate the emergence of industrial leaders deploying multimedia search solutions
* To create innovative and disruptive technology solutions (technology bricks, systems, services) enhancing access and manipulation of multimedia contents :
– Provide organizations and users with means to search, select and navigate multimedia contents
– Enhance the content production, management and distribution value chain for better search capabilities
Additionally, Thomson.net confirms that a variety of business models will be used to monetize and expand Quaero, including :
*Search software licensing
* Search services for Business to Consumer and Business to Business applications
