People have a psychological bias to humanize anything that communicates with them and companies are trying to latch onto that mechanism because they benefit when people get an emotional attachment to websites. So I think Google and many others are trying to make people think of websites as things with agencies, rather than machines controlled by people. And yea I think they are partly successful.

This is just stupid. I'm not going to sugar coat it. Nobody thinks their computer is a sentient creature save for some tiny percentage of people who may be mentally ill or otherwise disabled.

People can’t even tell the difference between their operating system and their apps.

There is an ENORMOUS difference between not understanding different layers of the technology stack and thinking your computer is a thinking creature.

Like I said originally - do you think people believe their television wants to sell them "Tide"? Or do they realize that it's the advertising company. As you say - people love to "humanize anything that communicates with them" and they "do not understand technology".