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French technology firm Thomson has withdrawn the Quaero project website after a barrage of interest from people followed French President Chriac's portrayal of Quaero as a Google challenger.

Maybe it isn't time to sell Google and cry quietly into a raspberry smoothie after all.

Chirac touted Thomson's search technology project as a challenger to Google and Yahoo; "For that, we will launch a European search engine, Quaero," he said. Quickly thereafter interest grew dramatically in Quaero's workings.

How to meet that challenge? Provide more information? Place a FAQ on the site? Nope. Instead, Thomson has imposed a "news blackout," InfoWorld reported:

The scrutiny was apparently too much for Thomson's chairman, Frank Dangeard, who imposed a "news blackout" Thursday on Thomson's media staff and ordered the project's Web site, at http://www.thomson.net/EN/Home/Quaero, to be taken offline. "There's been a lot of noise and our chairman decided we should stop making any comments until a more official press event," said Thomson spokesman Philippe Paban.
It doesn't appear Quaero will reappear anytime soon, and probably not as a publicly available search engine online either. Technology behind the project has to be developed, with work on it waiting for division between project teams, the report said.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.