PC Advisor reports that the Germans have pulled out of their collaboration with the French over the european search engine Quaero and instead will focus on their own search offering for the 'next generation internet' called Theseus, but it looks like someone forgot to tell the French.

"Earlier this week, Hartmut Schauerte, state secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, told an auditorium full of high-ranking political officials and chief executives that the government would end its involvement in the Quaero consortium. It will instead focus on a national programme, called Theseus, to develop search technologies for next-generation internet.

"There will now be separate programme - Germany's Theseus and France's Quaero," said ministry spokesman Hendrik Luchtmeier. "We will still see cooperation but in another form, such as workgroups. But the consortium between the German and French governments is over."

French government officials, however, claim the project is moving ahead - with German involvement."

Quaero was announced by Jacques Chirac during the French-German ministerial conference of Reims in April 2005, and was scheduled to be officially launched in early 2006 by the Agence de l'innovation industrielle (AII). Around to 90 million Euros (110 million USD) from the governments of France and Germany will be towards development of Quaero. Source Wikipedia