This article provides a description of a search engine, not as an informational tool, but as a socio-technical device. In order to map the milieu where that device takes form, we analyze a scientific paper about Google and the patent where the method known as PageRank is documented. We problematize a particular kind of relation with technology, by posing the following questions: what is being taken for granted in those techniques? How is the “government” of persons and things thought? How does the market drive the design of those systems? This text aims to contribute to the researches about human-machine relations, tracing, in particular, some re-configurations of technique and language.