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Comment by reubeniv | Hacker News Reader

Oh it's crazy how much stuff Disney can pull off Netflix, I don't know if they will, because it's in their interest to have some stuff accessible over more than one place, but they own ABC (Lost, Castle, Firefly, etc), ESPN, Marvel, LucasArts, now Fox and their assets, not to mention they distribute on behalf of many publishers (Dreamworks for example), they would probably clear more than half of Netflix's content if they pulled everything.

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Almost seems like Netflix knew what they were doing when they started funding a bunch of original content. I remember when people thought they were being silly.

Exactly. Imagine where Netflix would be without it's original content at this point.

Initially, I thought it was just a kind of frustration. For the cost to acquire rights to shows, you could just create your own original content that you own outright, and they did just that.

But now I see that even if the cost of acquiring other series were dirt cheap, the negotiating posture of companies offering the content to Netflix could change at any moment.

But didn't Netflix make the worst move possible?

They developed a heap of MARVEL original content, that Netflix funded, which now Disney is able to pull from them.

I would hope that Netflix negotiated a licensing agreement that prevented Disney from just pulling their rights to the shows they funded.

Current reports are that Netflix's contract rights to the Marvel original shows is set to expire in 2019, just in time for Disney's still unnamed service to launch. (…and possibly one of the reasons it isn't launching until 2019.)

"The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." - 2013, Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix

https://gizmodo.com/5980103/netflix-the-goal-is-to-become-hb...

Edit: He just got the company wrong.

Kind of like how Google made Android free to head off Microsoft, not realizing that Apple would be their mobile competition.

Google did make Android free to head off Microsoft, but it was already very clear Apple was the primary competition. They were trying to take Microsoft’s place in the new Duopoly.

From my understanding Android's launch was delayed because they didn't know how amazing the first iPhone was before its release. That seems to me they were taking it seriously as they were competing with Blackberry at the time if I am correct.

The big 3 were BlackBerry, Windows Mobile & Symbian (Nokia)

Android was built a lot like a BlackBerry/Window Mobile competitor in its early stages. Nobody knew Apple was making a phone, there were heavy rumors of course, but people weren't expecting the impact it would have.

Google obviously had to know something about it, as they provided maps apis for the first iPhone. But Apple probably kept as much secret as they could.

But none of them were really prepared for iOS's leap in touchscreen UIs. Android was the fastest to adopt, took about 2-3 years still though. BlackBerry & Windows Mobile waited to late for a reboot and Symbian just died silently.

Ah Symbian! I fondly remember my E62, the first mobile device I had with a real OS.

> Android was the fastest to adopt, took about 2-3 years still though

Is that true though? The first iPhone released in June 2007, the first Android phone (already with proper touch interfaces) came out a year leater, in September 2008.

Yes that is correct, the G1 came out already a year later. But it was still very clearly inferior to the iPhone, the UI was slow, things like scrolling lists was laggy and unresponsive, and no multi-touch gestures like pinch-to-zoom for maps/photos/webbrowser. IMHO Android really started to catch up around the time Nexus S and then Galaxy Nexus came out.

Disney also gets controlling interest in Hulu through this deal. All around bad news for Netflix.

Just as an FYI the Dreamworks distribution deal wasn't renewed in 2016 so they're 'on their own' as it were. I believe the two companies are still friendly but don't directly have the distribution deal in place any longer.

They will starting next year. They're building their own streaming service competitor

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/08/disney-will-pull-its-movies-...

I'm pretty sure Firefly is Fox.

Isnt lucasarts the game studio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Clone_Wars_(200... is on netflix right now. I think it was made by lucas arts.

Just got excited .. nope, not on my Netflix (UK).

No, that was made by Lucasfilm Animation, a division of Lucasfilm. LucasArts is the name of the video game developer and publisher.

You're completely right, I got arts and film mixed up

They will.

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