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German government puts up $165 million to start Google competitor
- pg 19y agoThis and Quaero will serve as valuable lessons for the governments that sponsored them. You can compete with Boeing this way, but not with startups. I admit I'm kind of surprised they still need this lesson. You'd think they'd have already learned this from the British government's attempt to set up ICL as a competitor to the Google of its era, IBM, in 1968. Never heard of ICL? Exactly.
- PindaxDotCom 19y agoUm, you can't even compete with Boeing this way. When will other countries understand that: the best role of government is to ensure the rights of businesses and people. If you get that right, the rest will follow. They shouldn't be using tax dollars as venture seed money. They'd be better off refunding it to the taxpayers!
- ivankirigin 19y agoBoeing gets billions from the US Military.
- gibsonf1 19y agoAh yes, but that is to buy Military products which Boeing is very good at, not to finance a competitor to google.
- ivankirigin 19y agoYou're right, not to finance competitors. There are maybe 3 or 4 companies that matter in defense, each making many billions while others get an order of magnitude less. So, no...there is no funding competitors in defense. There isn't much competition to speak of. But this is not to say the machines Boeing makes are not amazing. My comments are from working on military contracts. They're enough to make a reasonable person run for the hills.
- gibsonf1 19y agoPerhaps if the Military used my product, they would be less wasteful :)
- ivankirigin 19y agoThat is a billion dollar question: how do you get the military to buy my awesome product. The answer is usually absorb the culture and lower your productivity.
- gibsonf1 19y agoSo the usual answer won't work - but I'm not sure what will.
- ivankirigin 19y agoSome helpful advice: the people that decide to buy your product aren't the same people that will use it.
- Tichy 19y ago100% agree - I never saw the rationale for the government making risky investments, just because purportedly nobody else does. Imagine your bank adviser telling you they are going to put your money into high risk investments because nobody else does. Yet if the government spends our money like that, few people seem to realize that it is basically the same thing happening.
- dpapathanasiou 19y agoI never saw the rationale for the government making risky investments, just because purportedly because nobody else does. Risk is important because it offers incentives to the marketplace, and prevents economic systems falling into stagnation (local optima), as Aaron Brown describes in this interview: http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/05/19/poker_face_of_wall_street/ http://marketplacemoney.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/05/... But I agree with you that it is not the government which should be taking those risks, since (as others have pointed out in this thread), governments really don't know what they're doing in that regard.
- pg 19y agoThey don't even need to ensure the rights of businesses. That's included in the rights of people (the shareholders).
- gibsonf1 19y agoFrom my experience having a German wife and visiting Europe yearly (which is limited experience but helpful), many Europeans genuinely believe that the government can do things better than private groups. The evidence for the validity of this belief speaks for itself (not valid). In Europe, security seems to be one of the highest considerations in taking action which leads Europeans to have far more trust in large old corporations than in untested and untried new companies. The exceptions to this view are Eastern European countries like Czech Rep, and Poland and Romania, etc.
- ivankirigin 19y agoTo a certain extent, Europe does do socialism better. I'm sure if you could plot the corruption & waste per taxpayer dollar, the US would win. Former Eastern Block states had a completely incompetent and corrupt government, meaning movement to open markets was the only direction and the results are awesome. Estonia is a perfect example.
- gibsonf1 19y agoHmm, how do you do socialism better? Germany, as propsperous as it is, has chronically high unemployment (from 10% up to 20% in some areas) and a huge crisis right now with funding their version of social security (which they are unable to do.) What is really impressive about the Germans is that they actually look at the money they have and think about how that money is spent (in the public realm and private realm) instead of the smoke and mirrors we get here about how much something will cost and how it will be funded. Germans like precision, especially with money, even government money which is great to see, but does not solve the underlying impossibility of success with socialism. Germany is successful to the extent that it is capitalist - the socialist side is what prevents Germany from being as impressive as it should be.
- ivankirigin 19y agoI would define "do socialism better", as programs that come closer to the intent, with successful deployment. A concrete example: Scandinavian heath care might fall apart in the US from corruption -- something that isn't a problem so much there. I'm not saying socialism is a good idea, even in Europe.
- gibsonf1 19y agoWow, this could be as successful as Airbus's biggest plane :)
- ivankirigin 19y agoThis is perhaps the exact opposite of barebones seed funding.
- pg 19y agoYes, I was thinking that too. This is as far from traditional VC as Y Combinator is, but in the opposite direction. Which seems a further predictor of doom, because the trend in venture funding lately has been a shift toward the low end.
- ivankirigin 19y agoIndeed. Also, didn't France already try to make a google killer? That I haven't heard much lately implies the fate of this program.
- ivankirigin 19y agohttp://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/21/HNquaero_1.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/21/HNquaero_1.html " The French and German partners involved in a consortium developing future search technologies, Quaero, went their separate ways because of differences over technology, according to senior officials at the French agency funding the research. "
- staunch 19y agoSad really that so much money will go to waste. There are some amazing hacker entrepreneurs in Germany -- many of them move to the US. Giving 165 teams $1m would have resulted in at least one billion dollar company (and probably more like 20) even with incompetent decision-making.
- pg 19y agoThe money will not merely go to waste. It will actually harm German startups. A lot of smart hackers who might otherwise have started or worked for startups will get drawn into this doomed project instead.
- staunch 19y agoThat makes a lot of sense. I was just accusing Google of doing the same thing world wide. Do you think there's any difference between them hiring 5k developers they can't really make use of and what Germany is doing here?
- chris_l 19y agoHey, give us some credit! Humour me on the "smart hacker", but this German search founder will steer well clear of the government projects...
- adnam 19y agoA $165 million kiss of death
- Tichy 19y agoNews like that make me hate paying taxes so much :-(
- lkozma 19y agoThis will give a new meaning to the expression "design by committee".