Online, Offline, No Line
The dot-com bubble might seem like a distant memory after the recent financial crisis, but around the world, the Internet continues to fuel hopes for innovation, wealth and economic expansion.
That’s why the Internet has sparked something of an arms race between the U.S. and Europe over the past decade, with governments vying to expand its availability and use, hoping that the next technology billionaires spring from somewhere outside of Silicon Valley.
In Europe, politicians have tried to engineer catch-up programs to rival U.S. dominance of the Internet. France and Germany jointly started Quaero in 2005, a state-funded search engine designed to rival Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) offerings. European Union governments keep a particularly close eye on Internet usage and have been pushing to make Web access available in all corners of the bloc.
