Google's position is that its search results are as pure as possible, free from human intervention. The implication is that they're a reflection of reality, as found on the Internet. But by determining the order in which our queries are answered, Google actually interprets, recreates and reinforces reality millions of times a day.

In fact, Google's only real competition for master manipulator of reality is Wikipedia. On paper, they're opposites -- Google locks everybody out of its reality-defining process, whereas Wikipedia's definition of reality is whatever its crowd of editors agrees on. In practice, though, the two are in cahoots. Wikipedia pages are steadily climbing the Google rankings for just about every imaginable search term. So reality as defined by mob rule is being promoted by reality as defined by the mysterious computer program. Fantastic.