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It seems the European Union is all too quick to question Google’s dominance and probe its acquisitions, but is there a huge conflict of interest to consider?

For more than year a consortium of European technology companies have been working on the development of Quaero - said to be Europe’s challenge to Google’s dominance. Well, today we learn that Germany has received the blessing of the EU to provide $165 million in funding to Theseus, the German arm of the project.

Initially, the German government would pay several “icebreaker” companies - Siemens AG, SAP AG, Deutsche Thomson oHG and EMPOLIS GmbH, owned by Bertelsmann AG - to kick start research. Later, the German funding would be spread out to small and medium businesses for them to build on the earlier research.

In addition, France is considering pumping another $112 million into the project.

Anyone else see a huge conflict of interest here? It’s highly controversial that European companies are probing Google’s every step, while openly funding a competitor.

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