As EC splashes cash on a different search project...

Quaero, the pan-European search effort intended to rival Google, has seen the German government withdraw its support, while Brussels has promised €8.5m to a rival local search project, Pharos.

The German government has cited differences over the technological direction of the project for its desertion, less than two years after the Quaero project kicked off, and has decided to follow its own search path, Hartmut Schauerte, a secretary of state attached to the German Economics Ministry said recently.

Quaero - intended by the French as a multimedia search engine focused around indexing photos and videos - will now become a solely French project, led by Thomson, with the support of Arvato, start-up Exalead, France Telecom, or LTU Technologies, as well as assistance from the INA (National Institute of the Audiovisual) and research institute Inria.

Full story: silicon.com