Exalead is the backbone of the project (Score 1)

Exalead is the Search Engine developed by some French researchers, one of whom happens to be Corps des Mines. Corps des Mines is a very high Civil Servant position, open to only the 10 best students from Ecole Polytechnique every year. Since they get after two years (with 25) very high positions in ministries they also tend to have very good contacts with politicians... and are therefore able to influence what an interesting project would be (make a European competitor to Google) and which start-up to choose as backbone of the project (Exalead for exemple)
So to sum up: I believe Exalead to be a very interesting project. But I highly suspect this funding from the French state to not be a mure decision of what Europe needs, but more a very efficient lobbying from Exalead. And Germany might have understood that only now, explaining why they only left the project now.