Your misunderstanding lays with the fact you are assuming you are the customer, when in fact you (as the user) are the product (your data) being sold (via ad sense automation).
So put simply "if they are not receiving money off you are not the customer".
Your relationship is a raw resource exchange of your data with the payment of free services from them. In a sense they are farming you.
I've paid for google apps for domains in the past and the service has been barely better than when I was using the free version, so while you point is valid, the statement that google customer service is lacking for many paying customers is also true.
Fair enough, I've seen some really good service from the ad sense guys, maybe its jsut the team I dealt with I don't know.
I've never payed for Google Apps so didn't comment on it, and also didn't want to muddy my point as there is a definite grey area with a lot of Google uses in terms of thigns like blogger which make users also customers.
Your misunderstanding lays with the fact you are assuming you are the customer, when in fact you (as the user) are the product (your data) being sold (via ad sense automation).
So put simply "if they are not receiving money off you are not the customer".
Your relationship is a raw resource exchange of your data with the payment of free services from them. In a sense they are farming you.