In 2006, the Oxford English Dictionary recognized the verb “google” to mean “to enter (a search term) into the Google search engine to find information on the internet; to search for information about (a person or thing) in this way.”

The OED doesn’t admit just any word into its database. It waited until the same year to list “scooch” (meaning to squeeze in), even though that particular term has been around since at least the 1940s.

Admission to the dictionary is a sign of Google’s market dominance as the search-engine of choice in our internet era. But is it really even a choice anymore?

As Google has grown it has introduced its own browser, Chrome, which is now used by 65.5 per cent of computers. The default search engine within this browser, is, of course, Google (and Google also has arrangements with other browsers and computer manufacturers, such as Apple, to make Google their default search engine as well). Google now makes its own computer, the affordable Chromebook. Google’s Gmail is the dominant online mail server, used by over 1.5 billion clients. Entire businesses operate using Google’s services for communications, storage, and global exposure.

All of this appears to be free if you’re a basic user. The software and applications are already on your phone, and it’s the go-to on your computer: ask it anything and it will deliver results. Indeed, you don’t even have to ask, because if you use Gmail or Chrome you have consented in the fine print you did not bother to read to allow Google to “read” your mail and your internet habits in order to deliver targeted advertising to you.

This is how you “pay” for the services Google delivers: it trades them for your information, and advertisers pay Google to get their ads in front of your eyeballs.

In the good old days, people looking for information turned to Google because it had the most effective algorithm; it always found the best-ranked sites for the information sought in the fastest possible time. Like magic.

Google realized that search results could be sold. Its algorithm now learns individual users’ habits. It reads your browsing data, including your location, and your email. Your searches will bring up a different list of web sources from another person’s identical search. Your searches are “tailored” to your preferences, and that much more valuable to advertisers.

Today’s algorithm will bring up a list of “sponsored” suggestions at the top of your search results. These are not the best sources of information. They have paid to be at the top of the list.

Google has brought us to a point where the value of information is not in the information itself, but the search for it.

Because of its market dominance, and its access to all corners of the average person’s informational life, this threatens to redefine what we perceive as “the truth.” Information is at risk of being not what is, but what the highest bidder wishes it to be.

The easy proliferation that the internet enables can spread paid information in such a way that it rapidly becomes repeated into “truth.” This is a PR agent’s dream.

There is an old saying about “plain black and white” — statements that admit of no doubt. The metaphor comes from ink on paper: something that can be read (and re-read), not spoken gossip or hearsay; something written with intention, which, therefore, its author must stand by.

Newspapers reinforce and rely upon this kind of accountability.

What happens when plain “black and white” is transferred to a medium that borrows much of its functionality from the model of print, but does not retain the standard of accountability? What happens when paid content is indistinguishable from reported content? What happens when “reported content” no longer needs to be accountable? What happens when the algorithm figures out that a reader has a preference for paid or unaccountable content?

The theory behind the algorithm is that advertising tailored to the reader will be more successful. This has run over into the content it provides as well. “Tell me what I want to hear” is now an injunction to the journalist who wants to sell copy, or get “clicks.” Confirmation bias, that aspect of human nature that manages to turn whatever it encounters into the “proof” it needs to sustain its own beliefs, is the lifeblood of the internet and its social media.

If, in the old days, you could find one person who also thought they saw a UFO, now you can find a million, all within a few clicks, and there is no mechanism for accountability. In fact, that mechanism, “I saw it in black and white,” has been coopted. Plain black and white now underwrites the truth and “alternative facts.” It’s becoming impossible to tell the difference between them.

What are we looking for when we Google something? When you want to know the truth, Google will deliver not the truth, but a reflection of what it thinks you are.

Google’s threat to remove news links in Canada (in response to the federal government’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act) is really just an open acknowledgement of their methods.

Google is a mirror, not a lens.