Interesting to see the amount of negative comments.
Most of the negativity seems to come from the following points:
- EU-funded project cannot succeed in tech because previous EU-funded projects have failed in tech in the past (and generally government-funded project in tech are suspicious)
- Search is hard, and therefore it will fail
- The project is underfunded
Even if the points above can all be valid (though the obvious US-funded startup launched by a bunch of uni students seemed to have fared pretty well) it seems we are missing the point of this project.
The proposal is to contribute to the creation of open building blocks necessary to enable others (including private US companies) to make better search products.
Better search product are needed.
Shall we remember HN of some of the intense conversations that happened here about Google failing us:
- Google Search is Dying [1]
- Every Google result now looks like an ad [2]
- Google no longer producing high quality search results in significant categories [3]
So while, yes search is a hard topic, we should welcome initiatives aiming at improving the ground infrastructure needed to lower the barrier to entry on this subject and hope it will allow many companies to build better search products (or inspire other initiatives to contribute in similar and even more successful way)
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347719
It hasn't escaped the wider world that quality open-source search is desirable, and it's hard to think what this new EU project brings to the table that isn't already available if others want to contribute to existing efforts. I wish the EU project the best of luck of course!