&quot;Quaero was announced by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder during the French-German ministerial conference in April 2005. [...] Quaero was often described as a European competitor to Google [...]<p>The main source of disagreement was the format of the search engine, with German engineers favoring a text-based search engine and the French engineers favoring a multimedia search engine. Many German engineers also balked at what they thought was becoming too much of an anti-Google project, rather than a project driven by its own ideals.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quaero" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Quaero</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.exalead.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.exalead.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;</a><p>The project failed to deliver. Though the Exalead web search engine survived and got bought by Dassault Systems (CATIA 3D CAD). Next time they should open source the public funded projects...