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> What happens to Apple revenue without the iPhone and supporting services and products?

Something less likely and arguably much less bad than what would happen to Google if the floor fell out of the targeted internet advertising game?

Of your 6 "#1s" you listed for Google, only one of them is directly a revenue source and not a loss leader of some form or another with AdSense/Adwords being the tail wagging the entire dog. (Even being generous including GSuite revenue as a part of Gmail, and YouTube Premium/Music/TV/Subscription-O-The-Day revenue as if it were not a minority of YouTube users, it is still majorly advertising driving Google's revenue.)

Facebook is susceptible to exact same instability, of course, but ironically for Facebook is maybe more stable in some eyes by sole factor of being less diversified because most of Facebook isn't high cost loss leaders.

> Really? You think Netflix is in a stronger position? They're a single product that depends on the ever changing licensing from a variety of third-parties.

You mean like CBS, NBC, and ABC, aged 93, 92, and 77 respectively?

Netflix is a single platform but arguably every piece of content is its own product.

> Netflix is a single platform but arguably every piece of content is its own product.

That's the problem. As time goes on, all the really popular shows will have left Netflix (Friends, The Office, Frasier, Always Sunny, etc) and all that will be left are Netflix Originals.

The vast majority of those are not premium shows like The Crown, You and Stranger Things, but straight-to-DVD caliber bilge that will initially entice users because of the netflix branding, but turn them off once they realize it's low quality. You can't keep commissioning new programming forever while keeping the price at $12.99/mo. or whatever.

Programming has a fixed one-time cost to produce while subscription revenue scales with number of subscribers and is recurring. This means that as Netflix grows, they can keep producing more expensive content and grow their catalog faster. There is a feedback loop here:

The same money spent on content has higher ROI the bigger the subscriber count is -> the more/better content they produce, they more subscribers they can get -> the more subscribers, the more money they get to play with.

The mix of lower and higher-end content probably makes sense because the low end content is cheap to produce and caters to people with niche interests, or people who watch constantly and just want something new to watch.

This assumes the Disney back-catalog strategy makes sense in the digital age.

Pre-VHS, Disney would re-release movies in theaters. They could re-release Fantasia, or Cinderella, or whatever, and still make money in theaters in the 1970s.

But, there wasn't that much content to watch at that time. You had live TV or movies. That was it.

Today there is more on-demand content out there than I could watch if I lived a million years. Do you think "Bright" will keep subscribers 10 years from now for Netflix?

Just as an example: "Band of Brothers" and "The Wire" are two of the best things I've ever watched. Would I _keep_ an HBO subscription forever after I've watched them? No...

> The vast majority of those are not premium shows like The Crown, You and Stranger Things, but straight-to-DVD caliber bilge that will initially entice users because of the netflix branding, but turn them off once they realize it's low quality.

How many shows does NBC have each year? How many are still around the next?

Netflix does the same thing as all the other Networks. The difference is, since it's all on demand, they can just keep their low quality stuff around for the few people who actually enjoyed it, making their service appeal to a broader base.

Netflix's goal isn't to have only mega-hits -- it's to have enough different stuff to keep all the subscribers happy.

There is a very small Venn diagram of people who like Stranger Things and that new Goop show, and that's just what Netflix wants.

> How many shows does NBC have each year?

People don't pay $12.99 for NBC each month.

Not sure how that's relevant. Given this is a discussion about company viability, you could say no one pays Google for anything.

But they do, by viewing ads. They pay with their attention. That's how they pay NBC too.

Without search they wouldn’t really have AdWords would they?

Without search, they wouldn’t have revenue.

Google Adwords is most of their revenue and it won't exist without search

GMail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android

These products aren’t by themselves profitable, they just build the datasets used for advertising

There is advertising on Google Maps and YouTube, and if I recall correctly, YouTube has been profitable in recent years, and I imagine Maps will be the same if it's not already.

It's hard to find numbers online, but it seems like Maps generates about 10 billion in annual revenue, and YouTube 10-20 billion. For comparison, Netflix has 20 billion in annual revenue and 1-2 billion in annual profits.

The person I was replying to said Google is the most unhealthy of the FAANG companies with nothing to show aside from search. But... one part of their "nothing" generates as much revenue as one of those FAANG companies.

Google is one of my least favorite businesses, but I feel like everyone is downplaying their accomplishments and diversity.

> GMail, Maps, YouTube, Chrome, Android, and AdSense/Adword

These are primarily ads-based revenue channels. Sure, they have some enterprise Gmail subscriptions, Youtube 'premium', and take a cut of the play store, but those are all primarily platforms to serve you ads.

Products that Google tries to monetize that aren't supported by ads seem to fold.