I don’t use streaming services, so i might be misunderstanding: why is A-Z listing and Originals filtering needed? is new content discovery actually a major use of netflix? i was under the impression most people would just search for what they want
Every once in a while I'll go into search and enter random three letter combinations like "Sta", "Tho", "Mon" etc. When I do, I often find things in the search results that I add to my list and would have done sooner, except I never knew they existed because netflix refused to show them to me. I've also been to other people's houses and seen how different the things netflix shows them are.
It seems like all netflix ever shows you is what they want you to see. My guess is that they intentionally hide certain older content to try and drive viewers to newer content so that they can collect metrics. Newer things end up being pushed over and over again in category after category.
I'm not interested in giving them metrics showing how well people like whatever their newest releases are though. I want to watch whatever I want to watch whenever I want to watch it. That was the promise of streaming that netflix never quite delivered on, but for a little while it was pretty close. Now it seems like netflix wants to turn into cable TV. They don't even always release entire seasons to let you binge anymore (they can control the conversation on social media and keep the ad hype up longer if they don't give users the freedom to watch shows on their own schedule)
It really sucks to see so clearly what cable TV always should have been, to come so close to having that, and then have it slowly killed off in front of you.
The other reason might be the way they distribute stuff: from what I've read, they have equipment set up in various locations to cache content to reduce overall network load. So they want you to watch stuff that's cached on a server at your ISP, rather than something in the archives they have to serve from their main location.