What they call here a "bailout loan" is what Americans call next round of funding for tech companies.
French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
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Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#32> The company lost €13 million in 2020, €23 million in 2019 and €11.2 million in 2018 for revenues that amount respectively for €7.5 million, €5.8 million and €3 million. Pfft ... this seems to be peanuts for the Silicon Valley VCs out there.
They've got a terrible, terrible product. Not sure they would have received anything from a Silicon Valley VC.
Even Juicero raised money.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#33> backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, Qwant was designed to become a rival to U.S. search giant Google and bolster the EU's tech sector
How embarrassing is this? This is like playing with rocket bottles and claiming your aim is to rival SpaceX. The level of wishful thinking here is worth of a not too smart 12 yo. It's appalling to hear it coming from a major country and even the EU. Really, it's cringe worth.
The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself.
(European here, just in case someone takes this for some nationalistic rant from the US).
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#34> backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, Qwant was designed to become a rival to U.S. search giant Google and bolster the EU's tech sector How embarrassing is this? This is like playing with rocket bottles and claiming your aim is to rival SpaceX. The level of wishful thinking here is worth of a not too smart 12 yo. It's appalling to hear it coming from a…
They did copy SV, the product just sources results from Bing, like DuckDuckGo does.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#35> backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager, Qwant was designed to become a rival to U.S. search giant Google and bolster the EU's tech sector How embarrassing is this? This is like playing with rocket bottles and claiming your aim is to rival SpaceX. The level of wishful thinking here is worth of a not too smart 12 yo. It's appalling to hear it coming from a…
>The EU, France, need to swallow their misplaced, ridiculous pride and understand one simple thing: if you want SV results, you need to fucking copy SV. Otherwise just shut up and don't make an embarrassment of yourself.
This is also why there won't ever be a EU Silicon Valley. Paris isn't going to support any Europe-wide effort to create one that isn't located in the Hexagon, nor will Berlin support one that isn't somewhere in Germany. London pre-Brexit would not and did not support anything that might take away from Silicon Fen.
While other US states encourage their own tech centers' growth, Floridians and New Yorkers and Texans are all aware of, benefit from, and are proud of Silicon Valley being in the US. This can't and won't happen in the EU unless and until people feel more strongly that they are EU citizens than of their own countries, and maybe not even then.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how it works. In SV they would have received 10fold the funding that they received in Europe. As a result, most likely they would have had a better product.
Not so sure. Why compete with Google by trying to do exactly the same thing, but worse? It's a shitty business plan. Might even be too shit for SV.
> trying to do exactly the same thing, but worse
You mean launching Google when we have Altavista?
Launching FB when we have LiveJournal?
(I mean at founding/initial version level, of course they became better than their competition, but that took time)
The sad part about this is that $8Mi is peanuts.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not so sure. Why compete with Google by trying to do exactly the same thing, but worse? It's a shitty business plan. Might even be too shit for SV.
> trying to do exactly the same thing, but worse You mean launching Google when we have Altavista? Launching FB when we have LiveJournal? (I mean at founding/initial version level, of course they became better than their competition, but that took time) The sad part about this is that $8Mi is peanuts.
> You mean launching Google when we have Altavista?
google was miles ahead of altavista.
> Launching FB when we have LiveJournal
FB was miles ahead of LiveJournal.
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a trend appears…
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#38In my desperate quest for a Google alternative, I've given Qwant a try, some time ago. In the end, it was the usual soup: Bing search results with a different brand. Not only that, but Qwant's UI was confusing and ugly. If France's search engine has to be an ugly Bing clone, than it might as well die. At least DuckDuckGo has a very nice interface. I've started using Brave Search (invite only, for now) and I have to s…
I've had a look at their results (Brave beta), early days of course but it looks like the overwhelming majority of their results are just Google slightly re-ordered.
Really? That’s disappointing. Thanks for the heads up, I guess this explains why the results were good.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> trying to do exactly the same thing, but worse You mean launching Google when we have Altavista? Launching FB when we have LiveJournal? (I mean at founding/initial version level, of course they became better than their competition, but that took time) The sad part about this is that $8Mi is peanuts.
> You mean launching Google when we have Altavista? google was miles ahead of altavista. > Launching FB when we have LiveJournal FB was miles ahead of LiveJournal. —- a trend appears…
Not at their beginning they weren't. Google wasn't better than AV after their first investment.
FB wasn't even public at first, but School/University only.
Re: French search firm Qwant seeks €8M Huawei bailout loan
#40In my desperate quest for a Google alternative, I've given Qwant a try, some time ago. In the end, it was the usual soup: Bing search results with a different brand. Not only that, but Qwant's UI was confusing and ugly. If France's search engine has to be an ugly Bing clone, than it might as well die. At least DuckDuckGo has a very nice interface. I've started using Brave Search (invite only, for now) and I have to s…
While Brave does turn many away with its built in cryptocurrency and its questionable userbase, it's a damn good browser. I switched from FF after the layoffs and in short it has better privacy, UX and feature set and all BAT functionality can be easily and completely disabled.
It appears that beyond BAT integration most people are concerned about it being Chromium derived. While it's true that a more diverse ecosystem would benefit the users, I can't think of any organisation capable of creating a new browser from scratch that would be able to compete with Chrome. While I acknowledge that by using Brave I contribute to Google's dominance over the web, the only alternative appears to be using an inferior product - which would at best merely slow down Google's plans.