It's not a coincidence that the focus in UI design also shifted at the same time, in the post-dotcom-bubble years.
Software user interfaces used to be designed for users. Desktop software didn't try to make you send an endless stream of personal data and content to the vendor, or trick you into using it again as soon as possible.
Today's software is designed with an advertising mentality. Instead of customers and human interface guidelines, there are eyeballs and creatives. Previously it would have been a scandal if a software package sent all your keypresses to the vendor's server, but today everything is tracked and monitored. Most designers don't give a shit about things like accessibility because they fundamentally understand software as something more akin to a billboard or centerfold ad.
Meanwhile usage of the word "product" creeps to replace "software". To me, it strongly carries the connotation that consumer-facing software design is turning into the process of developing ways to surreptitiously extract value from the user.
Also, the advertising focus has only affected some of the SV giants. Apple has resisted the selling-products-to-selling-users shift by becoming more dedicated to user privacy. They still have "customers" in the traditional sense, unlike Google or Facebook. But people still see all these companies as being united culturally or ideologically, especially outside the US where they are referred to collectively as "GAFA" (including Apple). They are exporting something, but what?
The article does a great job explaining what motivates the people behind these SV megacorps and ties the culture of these companies together into this "just build it" or "change the world with tech" school of thought that he identifies as "New Communalism". These companies and their followers seem intent on creating an alternate government system that solves social issues with technology and engineering instead of laws and courts. The focus is on taking heavily regulated things and "disrupting" them, which really means just getting around those regulations so they are no longer relevant. This works so well because the process of creating and spreading technology is now so much faster than removing or changing regulations, however, they don't take the time to learn why those regulations were created in the first place, so they end up reviving or exacerbating old social problems. This has become a pattern now where everything in American life that is regulated must now be "disrupted" by technology.
Before Google/Doubleclick, computing was about selling hardware, software, and service to people who used them. After Google bought Doubleclick, computing became about selling users to advertisers. The user is the product, not the customer. This totally changed the balance of power.
It's really a bit late to be worried about 1960s counterculture. That was half a century ago. Think of Silicon Valley culture as Mad Men 2.0, instead.