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> backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, Qwant was designed to become a rival to U.S. search gian

by Udik 5y ago

> backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, Qwant was designed to become a rival to U.S. search giant Google and bolster the EU's tech sector How embarrassing is this? This is like playing with rocket bottles and claiming your aim is to rival SpaceX. The level of wishful thinking here is worth of a not too smart 12 yo. It's appalling to hear it coming from a major country and even the EU. Really, it's cringe worth. The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself. (European here, just in case someone takes this for some nationalistic rant from the US).

ErrrNoMate 5y ago
They did copy SV, the product just sources results from Bing, like DuckDuckGo does.
TMWNN 5y ago
>The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself. This is also why there won't ever be a EU Silicon Valley. Paris isn't going to support any Europe-wide effort to create one that isn't located in the Hexagon, nor will Berlin support one that isn't somewhere in Germany. London pre-Brexit would not and did not support anything that might take away from Silicon Fen. While other US states encourage their own tech centers' growth, Floridians and New Yorkers and Texans are all aware of, benefit from, and are proud of Silicon Valley being in the US. This can't and won't happen in the EU unless and until people feel more strongly that they are EU citizens than of their own countries, and maybe not even then.
tester756 5y ago
The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself. did china copy SV to setup their comparable companies? tencent, alibaba, baidu
- Udik 5y ago
  Good question. By "copy SV" I meant "set up an environment (law, financing) similar to the SV one. Looking for VC funding in China for example you get this (from here [1]): "According to the Wall Street Journal, investments by Chinese VCs now represent 40 percent of the worldwide total (Silicon Valley still leads the field at 44 percent [edit: this puts Europe at 12% at most]) and China’s share is 15 times greater than in 2013. VC investment in China grew by 3,000 percent – from 1.1 billion dollars to 34.1 billion dollars – between 2006 and 2016, with the fastest growth occurring between 2013 and 2016 (up to 2013, average VC investment in China was 4.3 billion dollars a year). This rate of growth continued after 2016. Chinese startups attracted more VC money than their American counterparts – 56 billion dollars as opposed to 42 billion dollars – for the first time in the first half of 2018. However, that has not proved to be all good news. Due to the availability of VC money, and pressure by owners and shareholders of VC funds to invest,even less promising startups can secure funding relatively easily in China." [1] https://www.netherlandsworldwide.nl/countries/china/startup-playbook-shanghai/startup-ecosystem-china/investors https://www.netherlandsworldwide.nl/countries/china/startup-...
axiosgunnar 5y ago
Every word is correct. The EU has become an embarrassing buerocratic nightmare for anything related to tech. The EU needs to completely start over somehow.

by Udik 5y ago

ErrrNoMate 5y ago

They did copy SV, the product just sources results from Bing, like DuckDuckGo does.

TMWNN 5y ago

>The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself. This is also why there won't ever be a EU Silicon Valley. Paris isn't going to support any Europe-wide effort to create one that isn't located in the Hexagon, nor will Berlin support one that isn't somewhere in Germany. London pre-Brexit would not and did not support anything that might take away from Silicon Fen. While other US states encourage their own tech centers' growth, Floridians and New Yorkers and Texans are all aware of, benefit from, and are proud of Silicon Valley being in the US. This can't and won't happen in the EU unless and until people feel more strongly that they are EU citizens than of their own countries, and maybe not even then.

tester756 5y ago

The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself. did china copy SV to setup their comparable companies? tencent, alibaba, baidu

Udik 5y ago
Good question. By "copy SV" I meant "set up an environment (law, financing) similar to the SV one. Looking for VC funding in China for example you get this (from here [1]): "According to the Wall Street Journal, investments by Chinese VCs now represent 40 percent of the worldwide total (Silicon Valley still leads the field at 44 percent [edit: this puts Europe at 12% at most]) and China’s share is 15 times greater than in 2013. VC investment in China grew by 3,000 percent – from 1.1 billion dollars to 34.1 billion dollars – between 2006 and 2016, with the fastest growth occurring between 2013 and 2016 (up to 2013, average VC investment in China was 4.3 billion dollars a year). This rate of growth continued after 2016. Chinese startups attracted more VC money than their American counterparts – 56 billion dollars as opposed to 42 billion dollars – for the first time in the first half of 2018. However, that has not proved to be all good news. Due to the availability of VC money, and pressure by owners and shareholders of VC funds to invest,even less promising startups can secure funding relatively easily in China." [1] https://www.netherlandsworldwide.nl/countries/china/startup-playbook-shanghai/startup-ecosystem-china/investors https://www.netherlandsworldwide.nl/countries/china/startup-...

axiosgunnar 5y ago

Every word is correct. The EU has become an embarrassing buerocratic nightmare for anything related to tech. The EU needs to completely start over somehow.