Gunnin’ for Google
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Written By Reprise Media | July 31, 2006 | Share This
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Bertelsmann heir and Lycos Europe Chief Christoph Mohn issued a call to arms over the weekend: Europe needs to band together, Airbus-style, to take on Google.
In an FT.com report, Mohn threw his support behind Quaero, the (perhaps dubiously named) Euro-centric search engine that’s being cooperatively developed by French and German teams. Quaero, announced last August (and heard from only intermittently since), “is not just about ‘let’s beat Google’,” according to Mohn. “It’s ‘let’s build up a competitive internet industry’.”
He compared the effort favorably with Airbus, the pan-European aircraft maker that eventually emerged as a viable alternative to Boeing. The European tech industry might not want to take the analogy too literally, though, since Airbus has hit some turbulence recently; they’re suffering a year-long stock hit stemming from delays in delivering their new ’superjumbo’ Airbus A380.
Meanwhile, on the homefront… Google is facing more immediate problems working the kinks out of its new Checkout service. A little over a week ago, blogger Kirby Witmer voiced his displeasure with Google Checkout over a pair of botched Buy.com orders…and was apparently placated when Big G apologized by way of a care package stocked with Google swag.
At least one merchant, though, isn’t so easily appeased. Writing in the Google Blogoscoped forum, David Sanger complains that after a sale he’d made through Checkout was inexplicably canceled, he’d been unable to get any kind of response from Google. He writes, “Fed Ex boxes of cups and mouse mats are nice but 24-7 customer support is much more important if they expect this promising service to be used in a reliable manner.”
Topics: Google |