French president Jacques Chirac yesterday pledged to help fund a new European internet search engine to rival Google and Yahoo as he railed against what he sees as the threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism.

Serge Travert, who is leading the project for Thomson, admitted the new search engine was developed "in part" to combat the dominance of US companies in the internet arena. He said the new service would not be built from scratch, but would build on "science and technology that already exists in France and Germany". Much of the content is expected to be European.

Although Project Quaero does not yet have a formal budget, it will be financed by the companies involved and by European governments, Mr Travert said. Some of that money will come from the €2billion (£1.4billion) Agency for Industrial Innovation launched by Mr Chirac yesterday.