Chirac unveils his grand plan to restore French pride


· President hopes to secure legacy with rival to Google
· Six major projects to get £1.4bn state funding

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Wednesday April 26, 2006
The Guardian


The French president, Jacques Chirac, yesterday unveiled what he hopes
will be his great legacy to France's struggle against the global
dominance of the US: a series of technological projects including a
European search engine to rival Google.
Mr Chirac, who walked out of an EU summit last month when a fellow
Frenchman committed the grave offence of speaking English, styles
himself as the defender of France in the globalised world.

After the biggest street protests in decades forced him to stage a
U-turn on employment reform last month, Mr Chirac is keener than ever
to be remembered for doing something positive for French pride.
Yesterday, he announced that he would provide ?2bn (£1.4bn) in
funding for a series of innovative grands projets, including a
Franco-German search engine to compete with Google and Yahoo!.

Named Quaero - Latin for "I search" - the search engine aims to be the
first to efficiently sort through audio, images and video. It would
search the growing array of podcasts and videoclips on the web and
deliver the information to computers and mobile phones. Quaero has been
a pet project of Mr Chirac's for some time. In his new year speech at
the Elysée Palace, he spoke of the need to "take up the global
challenge posed by Google and Yahoo!".

But his plan is not without its sceptics. The French satirical
newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné has mocked the project's funding as
paltry in comparison with Microsoft or Google. Mike Lynch, chief
executive of Autonomy, a Cambridge-based search software firm, wrote to
the Financial Times calling the plan "a blatant case of misguided and
unnecessary nationalism" and warning that by the time Quaero is
developed the market will have moved on.

The project was one of six unveiled yesterday by Mr Chirac. A plan for
delivering high-quality television to mobile phones, a project for
refineries to turn cereals into chemicals, a new light train system,
and diesel and electric cars are to be part-funded by the Agency for
Industrial Innovation, set up by Mr Chirac. German companies and
scientists will work with French industry on the projects.

Mr Chirac said he wanted to raise the global profile of French industry
and avoid a future in which France was known only as a "museum
country". "These big programmes will focus us on technological
challenges that are essential for our future," he said in a speech. He
added that China spent five times more on research than France and that
only one French company appeared in a recent list of the top 30
companies that invest in research.

France has a history of investing public money into big technological
projects. Some, such as Airbus and TGV, have proved a success. Others
have been a flop. The Minitel information system depended on the
distribution of free terminals. It was never successful outside France
and was superseded by the internet.

It is not the first time Mr Chirac has sought to establish France as a
competitor in the digital information age. After the election in 2002,
he promised to challenge CNN and the BBC with a 24-hour news station, a
"CNN à la française", which would counter the Anglo-Saxon world view
and spread French values. The station, CII, with some ?70m a year in
public funding, is due to be launched in December.

Big ideas

Quaero
A Franco-German project to create a search engine. Its budget will be
?450m (£310m) over five years, including ?90m in subsidies

BioHub
A ?98m investment in a "bio-refinery" that can use starch to create
plastics and food additives

NeoVal
The successor to Val, the automatic metro. It will use an
energy-storage technology allowing the train to recharge itself at
every station

Unlimited Mobile TV
Satellite and mobile phone technology to allow TV viewing from a mobile
phone

Home
A Schneider Electric initiative for extremely energy-efficient
buildings. Sensors in walls will regulate heat, light and ventilation

Hybrid diesel vehicle
Cars powered by diesel and electricity


Deckard

.

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