Netflix makes the most sense.
Apple is pretty weak with content.
Would Tesla thrive under apple with Musk as the visionary?
Hulu sounds like a terrible idea
Would Tesla thrive under apple with Musk as the visionary?
Hulu sounds like a terrible idea
But I would hate to see it happen because I think that Apple would ruin Netflix.
It would make absolutely no sense for them to buy Netflix only to cut out the vast majority of Netflix users by making it only available on Apple's own platforms.
In the primarily mail-dvd days, they were like the awesome video store that has everything; netflix online only has a (admittedly large) handful of titles, with ever more emphasis on the ever increasing quantity of self-produced titles...
While I was once very pro-netflix as a consumer, imagning one day that I'd be able to watch anything at all ever produced with a low subscription - I'm more ambivalent now imagining the future when the dvd rentals (and associated vast library) are dropped entirely and never digitized..
Genuinely curious, what is better at Netflix vs. Google?
At my level (Senior SWE, promoted to Staff SWE), Google was a place of secrecy verging on paranoia, endless meetings, and insanely huge amounts of process. You had to really work hard to get things done across organizations. Most people were just a cog in the machine, cranking stuff out. The meetings were huge, because all stakeholders needed to feel represented. Google was my first big company, and I'm sure others are worse. But Google was kind of a shock.
At Netflix, most groups develop their own process. If you see a problem, you go fix it. If you see an opportunity for improvement, you just do it. There is a lot more independent work, and a lot more small collaborations, especially across organizations.
I think most of this comes down to the Google "fungible SWE" concept vs the Netflix "Freedom and Responsibility" culture. For a concrete example, I had a bigger impact at Netflix in my first few weeks than I did in my entire career at Google. Within my first week at Google, I was still taking "new employee" classes and trying to sort out how to use the several different code repos my org used. Within my first week at Netflix, I'd identified and fixed a small regression in our FreeBSD TCP stack that was costing us 3-5% CPU across our CDN.
The one thing that sums up the different cultures is business travel. At Google (at least when I was there), you needed to find airfare and hotel that was at or below the median price paid by other Googlers. If you didn't, you needed to get your VP to sign off on your travel expenses. At Netflix, you book things yourself, looking out for the best interests of the company, and submit your expense report & get reimbursed 48hrs later.
The food was much better at Google, though. And I really miss TGIF, eng-misc, and memegen.
That being said, it would actually be better for Netflix if Apple acquired it. Right now Netflix depends on access to the capital markets to fund their growth, which is why they regularly issue debt to finance it. In the event of a recession or some turmoil in markets (Europe, China, etc) that send NFLX's stock price down and bond yields up, that would severely impact NFLX's growth trajectory (spending a lot of money on original content to acquire subscribers).
The biggest threat to Netflix is Amazon and that's because they (and their shareholders) are willing to run at a loss for a long time. They have a lower cost of capital and generate FCF from other businesses. They would not be impacted by turmoil in the capital markets. As long as investing in video drives e-commerce sales (as it has), they have an asymmetric advantage over Netflix.
Apple acquiring Netflix would give Netflix the same edge. If Netflix was bundled for free with an iPhone Upgrade Plan (or in the carrier's version of it) and it drove increased iPhone sales, the economic logic for investing heavily in original content is there.
If Apple acquired Netflix, they would not make it exclusive to their hardware because that basically destroys the value of Netflix. They also would not integrate you into Apple because keeping Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings around is key to executing the Netflix vision (but also because it keeps Apple, Apple).