Germany to leave Qaero Web Search Project to focus on a smaller, domestic research effort called Theseus
"We will still see cooperation, but in another form, such as work groups," Hendrik Luchtmeier, a spokesman for Germany's economics ministry had said back in December.
Germany has confirmed it is pulling out of a planned French-German internet search engine deisgned to compete with US giant Google and is setting up its own German version.
The French-German service - named Quaero, Latin for I seek - was created in 2005 to give European users a more local search medium for video and audio content.
French President Jacques Chirac and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder officially introduced Quaero in April that year and initially agreed to commit around 1 billion Euro to 2 billion Euro towards the project over five years.
The German economics ministry confirmed remarks in late December that the country was leaving Quaero to focus on a smaller, domestic research effort called Theseus.
"We will still see cooperation, but in another form, such as work groups," Hendrik Luchtmeier, a spokesman for Germany's economics ministry had said back in December.
"The consortium between the German and French governments is over," he stated, according to Deutsche Welle.
Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic chancellor who defeated Mr Schroeder in September 2005, never officially committed to the Quaero project.
Theseus is named after a legendary Greek hero who found his way out of a labyrinth inhabited by a monster—the Minotaur.
[Source: http://www.businessweek.com/]
Computer Beats Fastest Text Messenger
Ben Cook's fingers flurried so fast you couldn't see what he was doing
until he had done it. But when the cell-phone screens cleared, the world's
fastest text messenger was handed his first head-to-head defeat: a voice-recognition
computer had bested his record time on a complicated 27-word message.
"I'm a little humbled to have been beaten like that," the 18-year-old Provo, Utah, man said with a smile after the race. The exhibition was sponsored by Nuance Communications Inc., a company that hopes to deploy its new software across several wireless carriers next year.
Nuance recruited Cook to test him against their software before he embarks on a two-year Mormon mission. He has gained celebrity for the text title and makes $1,000 a day doing public appearances for phone company Cricket.
Two Nuance employees also participated, one using a cell phone with a predictive text program that turns partial words into full ones and another with a full QWERTY keyboard on a Blackberry.
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