Jacques Chirac has no clue

So very Old Europe, via the Telegraph:

French president Jacques Chirac yesterday pledged to help fund a new European internet search engine to rival Google and Yahoo as he railed against what he sees as the threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism.

This is such a waste of French taxpayer money that it beggars belief that such an initiative would even be considered in the year 2005.

Perhaps after they've wasted the first billion Euros, they'll decide to make it a "European Project"; you know, out of solidarity and all that.

What a truly fine example of Old Europe at work: state subsidies going to giant industrial companies to fund projects based on a delusional worldview.

Idiots. The whole of Google was created for $30 million, and self-funded afterwards by advertisers. Why is Old Europe so against bottom-up, entrepreneurial, for-profit ventures like this? It's clearly a more efficient and rapid way to innovate, create good, sustainable jobs, and increase a taxable base.

If tomorrow a venture capital firm announced it was investing up to $2 billion in a startup to compete with Google, and doing so on the basis that the world wants more cultural diversity than what Google is offering, that firm would be mocked universally for its stupidity.

Well, what does Jacques Chirac care? It's not his money, anyway.

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