Orange Tries to Take on Google as a Search Engine?

This is the type of subject that seems so unlikely to turn up that it deserves some coverage just for fun, if not because it's the real deal. Yes, I don't believe that Orange could ever win any competition in that field of play where Google is King. It doesn't have what it takes to come up from behind with the momentum necessary to win it, it doesn't have the reach, it doesn't even have the motivation, it is a wireless services provider, for God's sake!

Nevertheless, they want to try it and the Mountain View Giant couldn't care less, in my opinion, about it. The update to their search engine done by Orange last week increased the size of their index, improved their response speed, added new features to their toolbar and introduced desktop search. Do any of these sound to you like breakthroughs in the industry? No, I'll answer that for you, they don't. They are just standard, default options at the moment and they are most definitely not going to win it for Orange.

They would need something to make the difference between what Google is offering and what they have to add to that in order to get users to flock to their search engine. But come to think about it, that's what Yahoo needs in order to do the same thing, and it's been a search engine from day one, it would have had the experience and the manpower to trigger that breakthrough.

What is Orange France trying to do? Make it as a standalone search engine that they would later on sell to Orange? Not likely. Shoot for the moon because they have high hopes of gunning it down? Highly unlikely. If it were to take only two percent out of Google's 90, it would double its traffic. What then?