Germany to work on their own search engine called “Theseus”

French and German developers are separating their efforts to build an internet search engine service to provide an alternative to Google.

A spokeswoman at the French Agency for Industrial Innovation said that the French developers would continue to work on the already announced “Quaero” search engine service. This engine is being developed to index not only text but also photos and videos.

The German effort would now be concentrated on their own German-developed engine called “Theseus” that would be more focused on analyzing text.

The spokeswoman added: “There will be a French project and a German project, and as they are not working in the same areas, they will not be rivals but complementary to each other — there will be two programmes instead of one.”

The project was originally announced in August 2005 with great fanfare. It was supposed to involve leading French and German technology companies.