First trial was 2 years ago with Quaero. It was a French-German project with companies behind it like France Telecom, Thomson, Deutsche Telecom en lots of European research institutes. They were going to compete against Google ...but unfortunately they did not even come up with a beta version, it failed...
The second chance is called Theseus. It is aiming to develop the world's most advanced multimedia search engine for the next-generation Internet. It would translate, identify and index images, audio and text. De European Commission supports the project with a 120 mio€ grant.
Let's hope that Europe will take this second chance because I strongly believe that we need a healthy competition on the search-engine market ...Google, founded nearly nine years ago, is now one of the world's best known- and most valuable-companies.
Goed plan, maar wat een geld zeg... Wat dat betreft lijkt Wikia het goedkoper (beter?) aan te pakken: http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia