France seems to have a ferocious insecurity about American technology advances. We have seen in the past France's attacks of Google on the issue of trademarked keywords in Google advertising. And, France has been seriously grumpy about Google Print. Now France has sponsored an industrial alliance to mount a challenge to American technological domination, and the first step will be to build a search engine. Goed luck with that, mes amis, because it's a crowded field that's innovating like a house on fire. Chirach said, "We're engaged in a global competition for technological supremacy." I don't want to be discouraging, but isn't that like me arm-wrestling with The Rock?
1. France is a bit paranoid at the moment - the economy's in a mess, there's 10% unemployment, and everything seems to be going the Anglo Saxon countries' way (especially the UK - only 20 miles across the sea with much lower unemployment, and a much healthier economy). And every where you look, English is permeating into French, mainly due to the Web. Eg: "le week-end", "un sandwich", and there's not much sign of it abating. Chirac's in trouble too, as he's been in power for 10 years, and hasn't made a dent on unemployment. He's keen to be seen to be doing something - hence this type of thing. On the other hand, France is actually quite a hi-tech country - look at their trains, the Ariane rocket, military technology...
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Rich