The Research Council of Norway supports Norwegian search engine initiative.

In January Pandia reported that the Norwegian search engine company Fast had established a European search engine alliance to challenge Google

Fast and the Norwegian media company Schibsted are leading a research alliance with Accenture and several universities in Norway, Ireland and the US, including the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (which gave birth to Fast), the University of Tromsø, the University of Oslo, the Norwegian School of Management, Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Cornell University in the US.

The alliance asked the Research Council of Norway for money and support through the Centres for Research-based Innovation (CRIs) scheme, a policy measure aimed at enhancing the capability of the business sector to innovate by focusing on long-term research based on forging close alliances between research-intensive enterprises and prominent research groups.

On Friday the Minister of Education and Research announced that Fast had, indeed, got the support it had asked for, as one of 14 centres of research-based innovation.