Government handouts

Here's an interesting post from Marc Andreesen's blog on an EU program to fund research into creating an alternative to Google in Germany. I don't know where to begin to comment on this but I think the thought process of the EU goes something like this:

• The central premise here is that for a big American company to dominate an industry like Google does is infinitely worse than if Google were a non-American company. ( In today's socialist ideology, America = bad, big business = bad, for profit = bad)
  
• The role of government is to lavish tax revenue extracted from all taxpayers on whichever particular segment of the economy falls into favour at the moment. (It's not clear how favouring certain industries at the expense of others is desirable or fair.)
  
• It's the government's role to pump money into research and that doing so will result in successful companies. (I believe, but do not know for sure, that governments like those in the EU and Canada that put a lot of money into research do not generate as many innovations as those countries like the US where companies themselves do the investment in research. In fact, I would suggest that reliance on government handouts to support research makes the private sector less likely to invest in their own r & d. I honestly don't understand why governments can't just tax less and get out of the way.)

I guess my point is that I don't understand how making the EU taxpayer pay for research into a potential German competitor to Google that is unlikely to succeed, is a good thing. I'm sure the average taxpayer would prefer to have that money in the pocket of his jeans.