I've noticed that the words 'customer' and 'user' are starting to draw my conscious attention when I see them used (and misused) in mainstream journalism.

Consider: For most of the companies listed in this article, the customer is exactly that -- someone who pays the company for something, e.g. a cable or internet subscriber.

But for Google, Facebook, et al, the customer isn't the user; the customer is the advertiser. The user is the product. Google's customers could care less about privacy and user notification, except insofar as it spooks the users away from the service.

The distinction is worth keeping in mind when trying to gauge just how far companies might take this newfound willingness to resist.