Some time ago was noticed that in europe there is a project to overcome Google. It's called Quaero that is "search for" in latin. The countries that are involved in the project are France and Germany. But... it's a lot of time without any news about it. Does anybody knows how is the project? No quaero url is related to any search engine... is it closed?
Reminds me of the Dilbert sketch where the pointy-haired boss is reviewing 5-year-old mission statements. One of them read: "Consign Microsoft to the dustbin of history". There are lots of projects to overcome Google. It's not as simple as building a better search engine any more.
So true, Google may not even run the "best" algorithms as far as search engines go any more, but they have been branded so well and most people in the world who use a computer will probably know of it. Two different governments working on a search engine? Lol, no wonder you can find no mention of it anymore..
I don't care about google future, but when I listened to the news I looked for some domains about Quaero, but they have no domain about Quaero. I think they are going to change the name. Just looking for taking some advantage.