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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

> [2008] France has been given the green light by the European Commission for a $152 million government grant for a consortium building a European rival to U.S. internet search giant Google.

I don't think government funding to compete with private businesses works well

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ec-...

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They also funded 2 competitors to AWS, just to make sure we own cloud computing. Two is always better than one, right, by ensuring they'll compete with each other.

Another bright idea was to let both projects be managed by large reputable French corporations that everybody trusts. With no software DNA.

How come did both fail?

Edit: One of the largest European provider today, OVH, who existed at the time and was already the leader in France was explicitly left out of both projects... Because the founder is not a guy we can trust you know, he didn't attend the best schools.

C'est la vie

Govt=Legal grift

It's the same all over europe mostly, sadly.

We were pioneers in the medieval times, we can follow up the leaders barely now

Scaleway is actually fantastic for what it's worth. You can get extremely cheap K8s clusters and most things a startup would need.

Another private company.

The two heavily subsidized projects were:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudwatt

- https://login.numergy.com/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu...

For the one still "live", details include French URL names :)

Edit: A Google Translate of the home page. Close your eyes, imagine a homepage highlighting the essence of cloud computing:

Your Numergy space Access the administration of your virtual machines.

Secure connection Username Password Forgot your password ?

Administration of your VMs Administer your virtual machines in real time, monitor their activity, your bandwidth consumption and the use of your storage spaces.

Changing your personal information Access the customer area and modify your personal information in just a few clicks: surname, first name, address.

Securing your data Remember to change your password regularly to maintain an optimal level of security.

Governments that think they can innovate through consortiums. That's either ignorance or pork barrel politics. Either way it's a sad waste of tax payer money.

No consortiums, just subsidize cloud or infra costs only.

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