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Comment by mckee1 | Hacker News Reader

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mckee1·

"There will be no content club in my life time with $4 billion revenue...you are on drugs if you think that".

Netflix revenue last year was $11.6 billion.

Fascinating interview.

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I suspect there was a little rope-a-dope going on on his part. Microsoft was less than a year in to turning their ship around (https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0526bill-gates-internet-memo/) to ride the Internet wave. So he wouldn't have wanted to telegraph to other large competitors that this was going to be huge. (hopefully, given their investments) They already had their hands full with all the tiny startups who had been there years earlier.

Yep. Also, he had to be careful not to say anything that would suggest that having a monopoly in the OS market would somehow benefit the dominance of the content busniess, it seems like the interviews were trying him on that. I think the antitrust accusations started to simmer around then?

Interesting to note, Microsoft bought Hotmail for $400 million the following year.

I felt the same. Another piece was avoiding regulatory scrutiny as far as any discussion on monopolies. It's amazing how much business acumen the guy has.

To me if I look at the bigger picture of what he was saying however - he was comparing it to their software division which brought in $4 billion. If you look at where that division is today it is FAR more than $4 billion and dwarfs Netflix's revenue.

I think Spotify's even closed in on $4B.

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