I think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client applicatio

I think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client application and a website. That was equality, not identity! It's a terminology thing. Yes, they know the difference between the internet and their browser certainly, but I know people who more or less refer to IE as "the internet." It's part of the name, after all. I think they generally call the net itself either "the web" or "online." Obviously I'm pulling from a small data set, but nonetheless, IE does give the impression on the outside that it's the authoritative browser, much as Google's homepage does for search.