This is what you get with Socialism.   France proposed financing a European search engine to rival Google.   Jacques Chirac said yesterday he was doing this to "take up the global challenge posed by Google and Yahoo!".   On one hand, you have two small groups of very smart people who wanted to make a better piece of software who worked night and day while carrying full college loads to produce search technology, and then spent countless hours refining the product and making it a money-maker.   On the other hand, you have a country providing venture capital to try to compete from a place where it is apostasy for workers to be at their jobs for 48 weeks of the year or 9 hours each day in a marketplace that is notoriously unforgiving.   What do you think the chances of France producing something better than Google or Yahoo! are?

What exactly is the global challenge posed by Google and Yahoo!?   Just how "American" are these companies?   And how might they pose a threat or challenge to anyone?