Author Topic: French search engine (Read 796 times)

Krusher · « **on:** April 27, 2006, 01:11:47 PM »

I don't get it.

Why use French tax payers money to create a rival to Google? If French private enterprise went after Google, great have at it. But Jacques Chirac spending €2bn (£1.4bn) to fund projets aimed at beating Google and Yahoo seems like a waste.

BTW, the service is called Quaero

lasersailor184 · « **Reply #1 on:** April 27, 2006, 01:31:18 PM »

Queero? Christ, they are making it so that we don't even have to think to come up with jokes.

fd ski · « **Reply #2 on:** April 27, 2006, 01:34:17 PM »

it isn't about destroying google or yahoo. French have this thing about their language, and it really burns their bellybutton that everyone insists on speaking english. Idea is to use the search engine to popularize french as a language of the masses... unfortunatelly for them, 1800s are well past.....

deSelys · « **Reply #3 on:** April 27, 2006, 01:43:55 PM »

Yep, it's le retarded IMO.

Dinger · « **Reply #4 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:13:41 PM »

Now, if I worked for Thales, I'd be making calls and getting a significant slice of this for myself. Corporate baksheesh masquerading as a battle for cultural domination.

I've seen some of the French press for this -- Google is portrayed as a big evil hamburger-eating monster, threatening to americanize world culture.
Now, their project to digitize the books from a bunch of libraries has undoubtedly an anglo-saxon bias; and we can only laud anyone wanting to pour money into making more things accessible.
But a search engine? Google didn't get where it is by having a huge amount of cash to build an engine. They entered a crowded market and delivered a superior product. Trying to beat Google at the search engine game, even in French, is throwing cash away.

Saintaw · « **Reply #5 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:23:14 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by fd ski
it isn't about destroying google or yahoo. French have this thing about their language, and it really burns their bellybutton that everyone insists on speaking english. Idea is to use the search engine to popularize french as a language of the masses... unfortunatelly for them, 1800s are well past.....

Couldn't have said it better.

xrtoronto · « **Reply #6 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:24:30 PM »

will it be le Quaero or la Quaero?

and will there be a picture of Chirac in the logo?..or a picture of the Eiffel Tower and hundreds of cars on fire?...maybe a picture of advancing Panzers and Tigers?

Oh...le possibilities!

SMIDSY · « **Reply #7 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:27:12 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by fd ski
it isn't about destroying google or yahoo. French have this thing about their language, and it really burns their bellybutton that everyone insists on speaking english. Idea is to use the search engine to popularize french as a language of the masses... unfortunatelly for them, 1800s are well past.....

well think of it this way: your country's language has been the universal standard for centuries, then some punk island takes over the high seas and suddenly nobody speaks your language anymore.

xrtoronto · « **Reply #8 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:31:36 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by SMIDSY
well think of it this way: your country's language has been the universal standard for centuries, then some punk island takes over the high seas and suddenly nobody speaks your language anymore.

well..as David Lee Roth once said: "Here today; Gone later today"

Krusher · « **Reply #9 on:** April 27, 2006, 02:32:20 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by xrtoronto
well..as David Lee Roth once said: "Here today; Gone later today"

Just like his radio show

icemaw · « **Reply #10 on:** April 27, 2006, 03:28:21 PM »

le Quaero or la Quaero

does this mean I surrender he surrenders or she surrenders?

SFRT - Frenchy · « **Reply #11 on:** April 27, 2006, 03:38:25 PM »

not that i'm quite informed on the subject, but the way I think it is an attempt on preserving the language, and the French culture. The fact that the gvt is paying the bill makes sense, as 'preservation of the language', falls as preservation of heritage, such as national monuments, parks ...

I fail to understand why so many of u are prone to lauthing on the French effort of preserving their language, especially since it's close from "two millenium old".

It seems only a question of time before English takes over, and France already had to ban obviious words such as 'email' and create the French word 'emele'. As ridiculous as it seems, the effort can be understood.

Imagine that spanish becomes the dominant language in the world, and that your kids start to implement spanish words in their sentence, you would probably start a "wait a minute, that's not quite the legacy of our founding fathers, what can we do about it?"

SFRT - Frenchy · « **Reply #12 on:** April 27, 2006, 03:45:25 PM »

not that i'm quite informed on the subject, but the way I think it is an attempt on preserving the language, and the French culture. The fact that the gvt is paying the bill makes sense, as 'preservation of the language', falls as preservation of heritage, such as national monuments, parks ...

I fail to understand why so many of u are prone to lauthing on the French effort of preserving their language, especially since it's close from "two millenium old".

It seems only a question of time before English takes over, and France already had to ban obviious words such as 'email' and create the French word 'emele'. As ridiculous as it seems, the effort can be understood.

Imagine that spanish becomes the dominant language in the world, and that your kids start to implement spanish words in their sentence, you would probably start a "wait a minute, that's not quite the legacy of our founding fathers, what can we do about it?"

Dinger · « **Reply #13 on:** April 27, 2006, 04:28:00 PM »

It's not an attempt at "preserving" the language -- although the French are the best in the world at that: it's the best example of how a centralized effort at "preserving" the language can make the official tongue so rigid and inflexible that nobody actually speaks it. I hear bits of argot every day, but can't make sense out of it; and I'm the only one in the office who uses numeriser instead of digitaliser.
It's an attempt to have a european competitor to google. So they take Bertelsman AG and a company formed by a (french) former employee of AltaVista, and dump a lot of cash on them.
Google works perfectly well in French and quite effectively at that. What's going on here is the same sort of irrational jingoism that sunk the UAE ports deal.

Krusher · « **Reply #14 on:** April 27, 2006, 06:46:43 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by SFRT - Frenchy
not that i'm quite informed on the subject, but the way I think it is an attempt on preserving the language, and the French culture. The fact that the gvt is paying the bill makes sense, as 'preservation of the language', falls as preservation of heritage, such as national monuments, parks ...

There are 27 countries that speak French. I don't think the language is going anywhere.

And Google has a French search engine.
Google

Oh yea, quit repeating yourself