<story><title>Netflix is not a tech company (2019)</title><url>https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/7/31/Netflix</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>While you can make that argument today, Netflix as a company is 24 years old. It got to its current position not by spending $15B&amp;#x2F;yr on original content (which it can afford to do now) but purely based on a superior and novel tech experience for its users.&lt;p&gt;Of course eventually all discussions of this nature devolve into the intricate definition of &amp;quot;tech company&amp;quot;, and in the absence of one that is agreed upon, bringing this whole thing up is pointless.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saalweachter</author><text>Eh, as a user Netflix original content is a large part of why I still have a subscription.&lt;p&gt;I used Netflix back when it was mailing me DVDs, and loved the online streaming back in the halcyon days when it seemed like they had &lt;i&gt;everything&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Then came the dark days when content owners began pulling their IP from Netflix and scattering it all over the internet behind a dozen different options that offered them more money or control, and Netflix was a barren wasteland without anything that caught my eye; my queue was a variety of B-tier series that I tried a few episodes of and gave up on.&lt;p&gt;So I canceled my subscription, for several years.  It didn&amp;#x27;t matter what their UX or uptime was or how smooth their video codecs, they didn&amp;#x27;t have enough content I wanted to watch.&lt;p&gt;Then I came back for the original content -- I forget which series first made me sign back up; House of Cards? -- and while I watch licensed content on Netflix from time to time, at least half of what I watch is produced by Netflix.</text></comment>
<story><title>Netflix is not a tech company (2019)</title><url>https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2019/7/31/Netflix</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paxys</author><text>While you can make that argument today, Netflix as a company is 24 years old. It got to its current position not by spending $15B&amp;#x2F;yr on original content (which it can afford to do now) but purely based on a superior and novel tech experience for its users.&lt;p&gt;Of course eventually all discussions of this nature devolve into the intricate definition of &amp;quot;tech company&amp;quot;, and in the absence of one that is agreed upon, bringing this whole thing up is pointless.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TeMPOraL</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;purely based on a superior and novel tech experience for its users.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think this is accurate - the main value proposition of Netflix seems to have always been &amp;quot;streaming site with lots of mainstream content, &lt;i&gt;that is also legal&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;. I.e. it&amp;#x27;s the streaming deals they&amp;#x27;ve made that mattered, not delivery tech or their web player.</text></comment>