An Examples of Disguise as Marketing

In Disguise as Marketing I have been debating about how a company needs to put up a disguise as its customers which will help it to provide better services.

In a stimulating discussion on SlashDot on Google vs Yahoo apart from some great stuff on innovation and innovative practices I noticed this. (emphasis mine)

And don't forget the customer satisfaction angle. I suspect that what really turns the crank of people at Google is that they can come up with projects that will eventually be used by thousands, potentially millions, of people worldwide. They're thinking like customers, and in fact they are customers themselves... and Google's audience is so large in general that I suspect it means that there will always be a group of customers who can identify and enjoy a given skunk works project. And then the audience gets bigger... it's a bit self-perpetuating.

Google is in a special case here where its employees are its customers too but the main point is that there are people in the company who are thinking like customers and figuring out what these people would require. This could be a niche area to start with but in a course of time they will be can develop a large following.