However, with Google, the End User is almost never the customer.
It’s a overly simplified statement and misleads any serious conversation on the related topics!
Thank you
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.
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.