Can a better or just similar search engine which delivers the correct “unbiased” search results be built? With full unbiased and uncensored content and results - not that Google does that.

As an SEM/SEO Company we can bias some of Google’s search results on certain markets and keywords and manipulate the engine to show what we want it to show in the countries we want it to be shown in, now this is not possible on all markets and not as easy as it looks but it’s what we do and it works because of the relative “simplicity” of a search engine, it’s only a database.

The real fun would be if an EU regulated consortium of European ISP’s territory could block access to Google. The ISP’s seem to block more and more these days, so why not block Google?

That would finish Google’s European operations in one go and would cost a lot less. But is it legal and would that make us American? It’s anti-competitive, un-democratic and wrong in so many ways.

But oh what fun we could have! We would have real entrepreneurial competition on who built the best European search engine, now that would bring in innovation on the search engine market and the EU wouldn’t have to pay for innovation and development, it would happen and fast and all the money and results would stay in Europe, and then the next time the States decided to go to war without us, then we wouldn’t have to know we could just block it out.

Or

Bring back free broadband, where the ISP’s decides what to watch and access a bit like TV but who can complain if it’s free? I used to get these AOL cd’s through the door that did that, it was great until you tried uninstalling it and had to throw away your pc or reinstall windows to access the real world.

The ISP’s in the UK are already blocking or slowing down certain sites on purpose and now it looks like they will also monitor and try to manipulate traffic, so why not? Let them make if free and biased and censored like the papers we are put in our hands every morning on the way to work…

Show me a real unbiased democratic uncensored search engine that isn’t run on a complete random generator which indexes pages before they are made… until then let’s use what we got and like with everything else we read, make up our own mind on the objectiveness of the content.

If the EU commission want to compete and make the EU competitive, they should focus on getting free university access for all EU citizens, like it is in the Scandinavian countries, then let the competition begin on new levels much higher than that of simple text based searching, databasing and categorising and ranking of text and showing a few adverts..

After all search is just a step on the path to finding the right results and is it not the results that really counts?

How much would it cost to buy Google? Hmm $305 seems a bargain.
But ahhh Google is only worth that much ‘cos of its revenue…
How much of that comes from the EU consumer? Could some be kept in Europe?

There is no doubt that search of the internet is also strategic. Is it a good idea that all search engines are in US hands - after all these people have been known to bow to (some) government pressures (see China)…. should we trust these guys forever. Just suppose that some US president wanted to do something absurd like invade some Middle Eastern Country (unlikely I know) against the interests of European nation…. they wouldn’t want to put pressure on us would they???

And ….. thre is justified criticism for Google Books for instance in its anglo-phone centric view of the world… We don’t all have English as our preferred language.

So state subsidy might upset some of the budding entrepreneurs out there…. well actually there are good reasons for this age old tradition… and it is no reason why it needs to be confined to the defence industries.

Suggesting big companies can’t be innovative just goes against history.

How about coming up with something new and useful.

I can assure you that sane and very smart VCs would and are investing in generic search startups (don’t know about ’stupendous’ technology, we think ours is good ). Also I don’t think it takes a genius (to invest), more like a ‘black swan’

Regarding government funding, Mike is absolutely right, there are many more other drawbacks …

I.e. It is not high tech, I regret.