Will 2016 Be the Year of the French Search Revolution?
January 19, 2016
I think about French search and content processing systems once a year. Okay, maybe less frequently. I check out what’s new with Antidot, KBCrawl, Exalead Dassault, Sinequa, CustomerMatrix (né Polyspot), and Pertimm Qwant plus a handful of other outfits.
Most of these firms are unknown to those who kibitz in Sillycon Valley. Each of the companies has a revolutionary technology, world class technology, and galactic confidence in their zeros and ones.
The concern I have for French information access companies in 2016 is a story in USA Today, the McPaper which is often a source of amusement for me.
The article is “French President Declares Economic Emergency.” Here’s the passage I noted:
French President Francois Holland pledged Monday to redefine France’s business model and declared what he called “a state of economic and social emergency,” unveiling a 2-billion-euro ($2.2 billion) plan to revive hiring and catch up with a fast-moving world economy.
Will a couple of billion filter down to impact the economic fortunes of the French search and retrieval vendors? That’s a good question.
But the answer is, “Non.”
Some of the systems are quite interesting. Most of the firms struggle to generate substantial organic revenue in the US. Once a search vendor announces that it will expand its US operations, the follow through is often modest.
France cranks out some good engineers. But 2016 is going to be as or more challenging for the French search engine vendors as any other year in recent memory.
Stephen E Arnold, January 19, 2016
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