It’s not just in America that empires big and small are born and die on Twitter. It is on the social network that Octave Klaba, boss of the large French group specializing in hosting OVHcloud, announced on Tuesday April 11 the start of negotiations to buy the French cloud gaming company Shadow and the engine of French search Qwant. Mr. Klaba clarified that the “exclusive” discussion must be done jointly with the public group Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC).
The partnership between the Roubaix businessman and the CDC, dubbed Synfonium, plans to offer “transparent access to the best European cloud-based collaboration services”, specifies the press release published by Shadow on Tuesday.
“Transparent access” to “European” online services
In 2021, the Paris Commercial Court had already entrusted the recovery of Shadow to hubiC, owned by Octave Klaba. The company, founded in 2015, specializes in cloud gaming (game on demand), and cloud computing (remote computing resources hosting for individuals). It had raised more than 100 million euros in its early days, without being able to finance the servers that would have allowed it to accommodate more customers.
Qwant, a French search engine created in 2013 on promises of respect for privacy and independence from the Californian behemoths, has so far failed to find its economic model. The “European Google” even had to partner in 2019 with the American Bing to provide some of the results of its users’ queries, and to its parent company, Microsoft, as an advertising agency, before joining with the Chinese Huawei in the context of a financing of 8 million euros, in 2021.
Synfonium plans to “add other services to the platform” to provide “seamless access” to “European” online services, the statement said.