News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by aqme28 on Thursday December 14, 2017 @11:43AM (#15923742)
Is Netflix approaching monopoly?

If anything I've seen a ton of competition coming up from the likes of Amazon, HBO, and a billion smaller services.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by notheguyouthink on Thursday December 14, 2017 @12:34PM (#15924290)
Agreed, I have no idea what the OP might be referring to about Netflix. It's got a ton of competition, and has had an increasingly smaller selection of media due to companies pulling their own content to roll their own media services.

Netflix is becoming more of an HBO than anything. Hardly the holder of all media on the internet or some type of media monopoly.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by adamlett on Thursday December 14, 2017 @01:53PM (#15925477)
Netflix is on the trajectory to becoming a monopoly, yes. HBO is hamstrung by its lucrative cable tv deals in the US, which prevents it from competing effectively with Netflix in the streaming market. They will keep making money hand over fist from cable tv until suddenly they don’t. If Netflix is Google, HBO is Yahoo. Amazon in this analogy, of course would be Bing. At a glance they seem to have what is required to compete with Netflix: Deep pockets and technological competence. But to compete in this market is for Netflix a matter of life or death, whereas for Amazon, it’s a side show. As for the multitude of smaller competitors, they are all the search engines we’ve forgotten the names of or never heard of to begin with.
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by pkill17 on Thursday December 14, 2017 @02:06PM (#15925677)
If HBO is hamstrung by lucrative deals, then it stands to think that HBO's own deal making has prevented them from usurping Netflix. To my knowledge, I haven't heard of Netflix having overtly anti-competitive behavior but I'm all ears for examples. It seems as though HBO is capable of competing, but they have to make a risky play and get out from their cable TV bubble to do so, which is no fault of Netflix.

If anything, this shows that the monolithic telecoms that have large stakes in these cable TV brands are facilitating monopolies elsewhere because likely competitors are locked into their current markets.

EDIT: to be clear, HBO's unsuccessful attempt to be level with Netflix in the streaming arena is more "don't want to" and not "can't". I wouldn't call a lack of wanting to be monopolistic. If HBO suddenly turned around and wanted to compete directly with Netflix and got boxed out by Netflix in some way, i.e. Netflix striking deals with Level 3 or similar providers to prevent HBO from getting equal treatment, then there's a strong case for them being labeled a monopoly.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by adamlett on Friday December 15, 2017 @11:48AM (#15933089)
To my knowledge, I haven't heard of Netflix having overtly anti-competitive behavior but I'm all ears for examples.

I’ not aware of any either, but one does not have to engage in anti-competitive behavior to become or be a monopoly.

If anything, this shows that the monolithic telecoms that have large stakes in these cable TV brands are facilitating monopolies elsewhere because likely competitors are locked into their current markets

Yes, that’s right. But like HBO, they are trapped by their business model.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by jogjayr on Thursday December 14, 2017 @02:40PM (#15926112)
> HBO is hamstrung by its lucrative cable tv deals in the US, which prevents it from competing effectively with Netflix in the streaming market.

HBO's library is far smaller than Netflix's (though average quality of titles is higher). Their streaming service is also objectively terrible: slow, unreliable, bad UX. On top of that it's 50% more expensive than Netflix. I'm not sure it's just the lucrative TV deals keeping them from competing with Netflix in streaming.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by euyyn on Thursday December 14, 2017 @03:02PM (#15926373)
I remember that watching the same HBO episode via Amazon was flawless while via HBO's website it was often buffering.
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by morley on Thursday December 14, 2017 @02:28PM (#15925957)
> HBO is hamstrung by its lucrative cable tv deals in the US

I'm not sure this is true. HBO Go is available for subscription in the US, is available on many streaming platforms. Additionally, you can subscribe to HBO through Amazon Prime (among other places; I just happen to use the Prime subscription). I can't comment on differences in marketing spend or consumer goodwill, but from my perspective, I see the same level of service between HBO and Netflix (though admittedly, Netflix is usually more stable).

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by jimmytucson on Thursday December 14, 2017 @09:42PM (#15929312)
> HBO is hamstrung by its lucrative cable tv deals in the US, which prevents it from competing effectively with Netflix in the streaming market.

What are you basing this on? They partnered with the same company that Disney just bought to create HBO Now, their video on demand offering. It has 2 million subscribers and is another revenue source for them.

The "problem" with HBO Now is that subscribership spikes when the Game of Thrones starts and plummets when the season ends. Now that the series is winding down, they need to find another one but with their history of great shows I wouldn't bet against them.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by stcredzero on Thursday December 14, 2017 @02:34PM (#15926026)
In this analogy, who is Duck Duck Go?
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by sacheendra on Thursday December 14, 2017 @03:32PM (#15926689)
Hulu?
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by devwastaken on Thursday December 14, 2017 @10:13PM (#15929433)
Disney is rolling out their own streaming service in 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/disney-will-pull-its-movies-...

Netflix was just there first, but they don't own most of the content.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by hobarrera on Friday December 15, 2017 @02:46PM (#15934458)
Yeah, Netflix is a monopoly, or almost a monopoly.

Amazon Prime is basically US-only. HBO gets hired during GoT season and then dumped.

Meanwhile, the majority of the people out there have Netflix. We even see ads on the streets and all over the place, while the other two competitors are still inexistent.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by mc32 on Saturday December 16, 2017 @01:19AM (#15938095)
http://fortune.com/2015/10/08/netflix-bandwith

Netflix 35% of internet traffic; AMZ Video 2%. I'd say it looks like it.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by racl101 on Thursday December 14, 2017 @01:58PM (#15925568)
Exactly my thought.

It is one of the biggest companies facing a ton of competition and still doing a superb job.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by daodedickinson on Thursday December 14, 2017 @05:04PM (#15927586)
Hulu, Shudder, FilmStruck
Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by EGreg on Thursday December 14, 2017 @12:27PM (#15924224)
That's why I never liked having Netflix be the poster child for "Net Neutrality".

Like with Pro Life vs Pro Choice we have two campaign slogans "Net Neutrality" and "Internet Freedom" coined by entrenched interests.

Re:Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox by quadrangle on Thursday December 14, 2017 @12:48PM (#15924448)
Netflix is the poster child not because of monopoly issues but because there's a public, known record of Comcast slowing down Netflix before the Title II regulation came into being, it's the most prominent and widely concerning proof that non-neutral stuff does (and will) happen.