Netflix still uses AWS for much of their support systems (billing, discovery, etc. etc.) The core business of delivering video is not on AWS and has never been. That runs on their in-house CDN, OpenConnect.

> and has never been

I believe this is inaccurate, Netflix was streaming from AWS in their early years IIRC.

I have worked at Netflix.

The history is that mainly they used well-known CDNs for streaming, followed by their OpenConnect CDN network now. AWS has always been used for metadata.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

I'm not aware of them streaming from AWS, though it's possible a development group there did a test or something temporarily.

This seems unlikely - Netflix just finished their migration to AWS in 2016 after 7 years and has been quite public about it, and always has a major presence at re:invent, etc.

https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/completing-the-net...

They've never used AWS for their CDN.

> distanced themselves from AWS on more critical stuff?

Can someone familiar with Netflix speak to this?

It makes sense that they'll continue to run stuff in AWS due to their existing footprint, but are they mandated to build new stuff outside the cloud? And if so, why?

IIRC it is the other way around. They had much larger data centers but migrate more and more to AWS because of the stereotypical "on-premise vs cloud in large company"-reasons.