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Comment by xen2xen1 | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs told the Dropbox CEO his company was a "feature". You're saying Netflix is the same? I'm not saying Netflix is going to be Disney, but if they did their programming right they could approach that, eventually. At least an HBO.

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I don’t think Steve Jobs was wrong in hindsight. How many people still use Dropbox compared to Google Drive. They even shifted focus to B2B. But storage is so cheap nowadays, their moat has completely evaporated.

They have every opportunity to be an HBO. But they’ve got great tech combined with a collection of content missteps and excessive price hikes. When was the last time HBO’s price went up?

Given the state content licensing, I actually think that is the case. Netflix cant compete financially with Apple or Amazon, or on content against Disney, Paramount or WB. HBO is an absolute best case scenario, but HBO was owned by Warner and ATT, so they had (IMO) better resources.

Netflix is a zombie unless they can either produce some very popular series or the government starts taking antitrust seriously and either divorces producers and distributors or forces FRAND licensing for all content.

I don’t think Netflix is a zombie. It simply might not be a $100B+ company for the time being, like Disney. Which some investors may have hoped it would become by now (although I do not why they would have thought that).

It may still be a viable business (remains to be seen), but under the current rules they will be outcompeted.

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