By chance, I stumbled upon a book on search engines (in German only), and how they challenge media policy, that was published ten years ago. I was among the authors.

Reading key parts of the book today and seeing what happened over a relatively short period of time is stunning. The book is still available on amazon, and I think it is still worth a read if you are interested in the power of search engines, their influence on our thinking on how this has evolved. Here you go: http://goo.gl/v4OsQf .