The internet graveyard is already filling up with Google-killers, challengers that have failed to knock the US internet search engine off its perch. Now a European challenger is stepping into the ring, in the form of Quaero - a Franco-German project to create a competitor capable of finding audio, photographs and video online, in addition to text. The likelihood of success for a state-funded challenge to the likes of Google and Yahoo is, however, low.

The Quaero project - its name means "I seek" in Latin - was cooked up last April by France's President Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, then German chancellor. It is one of several supported by Mr Chirac in an effort to combat US hegemony in the digital era - the CFII international satellite television news channel is another. He dragged Quaero into the limelight in his New Year address, with grandiose promises to challenge the internet search dominance of the US groups.