[dx034]

Still, saying you're not the customer but the product is wrong. If you watch TV, you're also not the product. I'd probably classify TV audience as customers of the stations, even if the money is made with advertisement. But viewers are certainly not products.

Google isn't different from a TV station. You as a user are a customer and pay Google by consuming the ads they present you in various products.

[rock_hard]

To extend that argument: NPR listeners for example are also not the product just because they don't pay NPR (but instead its funded by taxes).

[dragonwriter]

> NPR listeners for example are also not the product just because they don't pay NPR (but instead its funded by taxes).

NPR is mostly not funded (even indirectly) by taxes, and has both actual targeted advertising on their own and platform (for digital properties), and “underwriting spots” from sponsors on its broadcasts, that while regulated more than traditional advertising and are, and have been acknowledged by NPR to be, a form of advertising by the sponsors driven by the same factors and concerns that drive traditional advertising.