The following is an Op-Ed piece written by shopping search engine Foundem’s co-founder Adam Raff, followed by a description of Foundem from their site. -editor

As we become increasingly dependent on the Internet, we need to be increasingly concerned about how it is regulated. The Federal Communications Commission has proposed “network neutrality” rules, which would prohibit Internet service providers from discriminating against or charging premiums for certain services or applications on the Web. The commission is correct that ensuring equal access to the infrastructure of the Internet is vital, but it errs in directing its regulations only at service providers like AT&T and Comcast.

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.

The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much market power lies in the hands of one company: Google. With 71 percent of the United States search market (and 90 percent in Britain), Google’s dominance of both search and search advertising gives it overwhelming control. Google’s revenues exceeded $21 billion last year, but this pales next to the hundreds of billions of dollars of other companies’ revenues that Google controls indirectly through its search results and sponsored links.

One way that Google exploits this control is by imposing covert “penalties” that can strike legitimate and useful Web sites, removing them entirely from its search results or placing them so far down the rankings that they will in all likelihood never be found. For three years, my company’s vertical search and price-comparison site, Foundem, was effectively “disappeared” from the Internet in this way.

Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,” Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others. Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning.

Because of its domination of the global search market and ability to penalize competitors while placing its own services at the top of its search results, Google has a virtually unassailable competitive advantage. And Google can deploy this advantage well beyond the confines of search to any service it chooses. Wherever it does so, incumbents are toppled, new entrants are suppressed and innovation is imperiled.

Google’s treatment of Foundem stifled our growth and constrained the development of our innovative search technology. The preferential placement of Google Maps helped it unseat MapQuest from its position as America’s leading online mapping service virtually overnight. The share price of TomTom, a maker of navigation systems, has fallen by some 40 percent in the weeks since the announcement of Google’s free turn-by-turn satellite navigation service. And RightMove, Britain’s leading real-estate portal, lost 10 percent of its market value this month on the mere rumor that Google planned a real-estate search service here.

Without search neutrality rules to constrain Google’s competitive advantage, we may be heading toward a bleakly uniform world of Google Everything — Google Travel, Google Finance, Google Insurance, Google Real Estate, Google Telecoms and, of course, Google Books.

Some will argue that Google is itself so innovative that we needn’t worry. But the company isn’t as innovative as it is regularly given credit for. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Groups, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Android and many other Google products are all based on technology that Google has acquired rather than invented.

Even AdWords and AdSense, the phenomenally efficient economic engines behind Google’s meteoric success, are essentially borrowed inventions: Google acquired AdSense by purchasing Applied Semantics in 2003; and AdWords, though developed by Google, is used under license from its inventors, Overture.

Google was quick to recognize the threat to openness and innovation posed by the market power of Internet service providers, and has long been a leading proponent of net neutrality. But it now faces a difficult choice. Will it embrace search neutrality as the logical extension to net neutrality that truly protects equal access to the Internet? Or will it try to argue that discriminatory market power is somehow dangerous in the hands of a cable or telecommunications company but harmless in the hands of an overwhelmingly dominant search engine?

The F.C.C. is now inviting public comment on its proposed network neutrality rules, so there is still time to persuade the commission to expand the scope of the regulations. In particular, it should ensure that the principles of transparency and nondiscrimination apply to search engines as well as to service providers. The alternative is an Internet in which innovation can be squashed at will by an all-powerful search engine.

Adam Raff is a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology firm.

Foundem is an advanced vertical search engine. Our aim is to significantly improve the way people search the Web for information, products, and services, by providing a one-stop, multi-domain parametric search and price comparison service that goes far beyond the keyword-centric restrictions of conventional search engines. Whether users are looking for flights, a job, a television, sunglasses, or even a new house, Foundem’s revolutionary vertical search technology allows them to search and compare the market in seconds, saving time, effort, and money.

Vertical search engines like Foundem are becoming increasingly important because their detailed understanding of a vertical (or search category) allows them to delve much deeper than a conventional search engine.  A conventional search engine, for example, allows a search for flight-related websites, whereas the right vertical search engine allows a search for the actual flights. The same is true for jobs, consumer goods, real estate, hotels – indeed, for anything where users cannot adequately express what they are looking for with keywords alone. (emphasis mine – ed.)

Providing vertical search, even for just one vertical, is notoriously difficult. Until now, there was no general-purpose technical solution for parametric, vertical search. Each vertical-search service has had to develop its own ad hoc, domain-specific, solution. This is why vertical search engines have traditionally been restricted to just one or a small handful of domains.

Traditional search engines are therefore broad but superficial (shallow), while vertical search engines tend to be deep but narrow (highly specialised). There was, in effect, an insurmountable technology barrier preventing traditional search engines from going deeper and vertical search engines from going broader.

Foundem’s patented WebSentient™ technology provides the World’s first and only general-purpose vertical search platform. Our revolutionary WebSentient technology can provide accurate, timely, and highly-detailed parametric search within any domain.

Foundem is first and foremost a technology company. We are dedicated to developing market-leading vertical-search services that provide significant benefits to our users. We currently provide best-of-breed vertical search in the travel, jobs, real-estate, and shopper comparison domains. No other vertical-search service in the world can match Foundem’s breadth.

We are not a retailer. We don’t actually sell anything. Instead, we present you with details and the best (and worst!) prices from hundreds of different sources, all in one place.

Foundem’s users can:

*Save time, effort and money by searching dozens or even hundreds of sites at once.
*Compare prices and other important features from numerous sites from one simple, but descriptive, search form.
*Discover deals from providers that other sites miss, such as EasyJet and JetBlue. We feature bargains from providers you won’t find via the online travel agencies and other shopper comparison sites. The small and independent suppliers often offer substantial savings over larger suppliers.
*Purchase directly from the brands that they trust. Foundem takes you directly to the supplier’s website, often to within just a click or two from purchase.

Although comparison shopping isn’t only about comparing prices, we understand that price is often a critical part of any buying decision. Rest assured that, wherever possible, we try to ensure that the price you see is the price you pay.

It is important to us that our search results are as comprehensive and objective as possible, so we never artificially give preferential placement to one of our suppliers over another. We even search commission-free suppliers where we believe that they have something truly unique to offer.

As anyone who has searched the Web will know, the search itself is just the beginning. Wading through thousands of results without a meaningful way of prioritising and exploring them can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Our industry-leading result filters allow you to refine your search criteria instantaneously, making it easy for you to precisely hone in on exactly what you’re looking for.

We want the Web to fulfil its full promise as a global marketplace. WebSentient technology is therefore available to others under license (if you are interested in licensing our technology, you can email us at enquiries at foundem dot com).

Foundem is proud to provide state-of-the-art vertical-search and price comparison services to our partners