Europe should not respond to America’s subsidies binge with its own blunders
It must protect the single market, not destroy it
AmericaN success has a way of flustering Europe into bad policies. Search engines are one dispiriting example. As Google and Yahoo dominated the internet in the early 2000s, Jacques Chirac, then president of France, beseeched Europe to “go on the offensive” so that America would not dominate “the power of tomorrow”. With the EU’s assent, France poured around €100m (roughly $147m back then) into Quaero, a would-be rival to America’s giants. Predictably the venture was dubbed “Eurogoogle”. Equally predictably, the big firms and public outfits that pocketed the money frittered it all away. Whoever Google’s rivals are today, they are not from Europe. Those curious to find out what happened to Quaero can ask Google, or a chatbot.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The copycat trap”
Europe February 11th 2023
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- Russia’s technocrats keep funds flowing for Vladimir Putin’s war
- Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are suffering with PTSD
- Why France is arguing about work, and the right to be lazy
- Europe should not respond to America’s subsidies binge with its own blunders
From the February 11th 2023 edition
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