Thompson Looks Strong--Do Google have to worry?

I had written earlier about European companies working on a search engine (more than a search engine) to challenge giants such as Google and Yahoo.
There is a company called Thompson who is also one of the key player behind upcoming project "Quaero."

Thompson is a pioneer in video and imaging, and provides service to the clients in media and entertainment fields. They include the ISPs (internet service providers), movie studios, video users, etc.

They are getting very active, and have presence in already 30 countries.

I found the following interesting facts from their site :

1. They are number one in physical media service world wide
2. Number one in out-of-home advertising services
3. Number 2 in post-production services.
4. Number 1 in DSL modems/gateways
5. Number 2 in cable modems
6. They have portfolio of around 45000 patents
7. More than 4000 people working with more than 400 engineers.
8. Have lots of properties
9. Their clients include Direct TV, Disney, ABC, ABS, CNN, Walmart, Best Buy etc
   

List goes on and on. You can also see for your self at Thompson's site .
So what does this mean? Looks pretty strong, and as I said that they are working on the "Quaero" project. So can't wait to see what will happen, and how Yahoo and Google will respond to that. It is still going to take some time but again you never know....