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Comment by foobaw | Hacker News Reader

This highly contrasts Netflix, which barely has any leaks, although discloses almost all their information to employees.

Is it Apple's company size and culture that make leaks inevitable?

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It's possible, but I don't think that's the primary factor.

Netflix is a software/service company. When they've got something new, they can just ship it right away. Or if they decide to change something at the last minute, they can do that.

Apple is a hardware company, and they produce everything at volume (millions of units). Their products, by nature, have long lead times. The design must be finalized well before it ever ships.

If I were a tech reporter looking for leaks, I wouldn't place much trust in anything I heard from Netflix, because it'd be too easy for them to change it completely before it ships. Also, if the final product might be released to everyone tomorrow, my incorrect info will still be fresh in everyone's mind.

This applies with Apple, too. I hear a lot more rumors/leaks regarding the shape of the next iPhone, than I do rumors/leaks about the on-screen visuals of the next iOS (which could easily change).

Aside from new shows (which are pretty much announced once they're green-lit), it's a bit hard for me to think of much at Netflix that the tech press is waiting to find out with baited breath. We're rolling out a new recommendation engine that gives even worse results than before?

I'm sure there are some things but there are very few tech company announcement details (outside of financial results) that so many people are anxious to learn ahead of time as specs and features of upcoming Apple products.

That's true, too. Because Netflix is software/service-based, all of the new tech I hear about from Netflix (like Chaos Monkey) tends to be developer-oriented, not consumer-oriented.

That's kind of the nature of the business. Users want Netflix to be basically invisible -- they just want to watch their favorite show.

There are about five comments saying there is nothing Netflix employees can leak that people care about. You’re all thinking too tech centric.

Nielsen, studios, and the press would love to get their hands on Netflix’s viewer numbers and associated demographic data for a given show or movie.

That's fair. It's certainly true that business data associated with any high-profile company is going to be of a lot of interest, especially if it's something that a lot of people want to know but the company has refused to make public.

And listen to just about any earnings call and you'll hear lots of financial analysts trying to extract some more "color" from behind whatever numbers were released.

Sure, but how would we know if those did get leaked? I'm sure it happens all the time. We just know about consumer-product leaks because they're being leaked to us, the public.

Maybe. You have a big company where practically everything is a secret and a huge number of bloggers/press outlets that are desperate to publish any information about future Apple products however trivial and unconfirmed.

What would Netflix leak? Apple leaks are much more valuable because people are excited about how the hardware may evolve.

> What would Netflix leak?

Off the top of my head: viewership and engagement by content, new content deals currently being negotiated and their terms, how much they spend on infrastructure and what they spend it on. It's valuable info for investors and traders, agents, tech industry analysts.

Maybe Netflix is a young company with a lot of growth. Maybe Apple has a proportion of disgruntled employees because everyone has been suffering their secrecy for 20 years and some might be upset about their career paths, without being allowed to talk about it. It just takes 10 leakers for a full year of news.

They shipped their first DVD 20 years ago according to the DVD mailer I just received. So they're not that young. (Obviously, video streaming is more recent.)

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