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Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

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Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#151

Post by treis »

drewg123 wrote: post #101
lmkg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say something similar. It's inarguable that they were a tech company, when they pioneered streaming delivery for existing video content. Their tech platform was their primary differentiator to competitors for a number of years. Whether they are currently a tech company is a bit fuzzier. Certainly they new have content as an additional differentiator, and the margin of their tech advantage has narrowed.

I think we have a large advantage in the CDN space, both in integration and efficiency. In terms of efficiency, we've been serving at 100Gb/s (mostly TLS encrypted) from single socket servers since 2017, and are moving towards 400Gb/s today. How many other companies can say that? I'm talking about the push to 400Gb/s at EuroBSDCon online, a week from Sunday..

But that mostly doesn't matter. The consumer doesn't care if their movies are coming from a server handling 10Gb/s or 100 Gb/s or 400 Gb/s. There's cost savings there, but I imagine that content costs dwarf delivery costs at this point.

There is some technology component where the UI, resposiveness, reliability, and so on impact the user experience. But still content is king there. The HBO apps suck and their streaming is less reliable than others but they've got the content I wanna watch so I put up with it.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#152

Post by jdsully »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #95
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. "X makes money, therefore they are not a tech company" seems rather oversimplified in the same way "X is a tech company" is oversimplified. Actually, it seems oversimplified to the point of maybe not being so useful. I think the way most people would define "tech company," if they were pressed…

Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars. Probably because people don't even have a good definition of "tech". Everything we use is tech. Even books. Some of it is old, some of it is new. But people's definition of tech mostly centers around when they were born. As a software developer, I mostly car…

Cars have been in the small incremental improvement camp for decades which is why they’re not considered tech. Tesla is the outlier because they are pushing a revolutionary change not just incremental ICE improvements and are valued as such on the stock market.

Auto makers could turn into tech companies again but their risk tolerance has to be turned way up.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#154

Post by nonameiguess »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #95
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. "X makes money, therefore they are not a tech company" seems rather oversimplified in the same way "X is a tech company" is oversimplified. Actually, it seems oversimplified to the point of maybe not being so useful. I think the way most people would define "tech company," if they were pressed…

Most people wouldn't consider car companies tech companies, but they definitely do R&D and directly sell the technology that results from that inside their cars. Probably because people don't even have a good definition of "tech". Everything we use is tech. Even books. Some of it is old, some of it is new. But people's definition of tech mostly centers around when they were born. As a software developer, I mostly car…

The history of the word "tech" as an industry sector is that it has been used to refer to computing technology, but cars are certainly a technology more broadly understood.

But we probably should just stick to industry standard jargon. Lockheed and Boeing are definitely technology companies, but not "tech" companies, although that is even further complicated in that they do sell computing hardware and software products, not just airplanes and missiles.

Netflix unambiguously only sells entertainment, though. They use an app and a website as a delivery mechanism, but the app isn't the product.

Also, as much as the emphasis on hacker news is think of employment by Netflix as being an engineer for Netflix, engineers are very far from the highest paid contracts. No engineer is getting the $500 million deals Netflix hands out to Shonda Rhimes and Benioff and Weiss. Netflix itself recognizes content is king here.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#155

Post by rileymat2 »

bluetomcat wrote: post #144
auggierose wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody I know considers a car company a tech company. I think there exists a strange Silicon Valley definition of tech out there. But maybe my German bias shows. I mean, most of the stuff in SV barely qualifies as tech.

The SV definition of tech leans towards "a user-centric service delivered over the web, with some clever software solutions behind it to handle a lot of data and users".

I thought the definition was more about scaling because of the near zero incremental cost of servicing another customer. But using some sort of tech as the product.

Other industries also exhibit this, like media.

And that is what differs an auto company from a Google. The next car sold still has significant capital investment.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#156

Post by ajford »

plandis wrote: post #128
ajford wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I have Paramount, Hulu, and HBO subscriptions, but I'm far more likely to fly the black flag and watch it from my Plex server instead of their apps due to how painful those apps are to use. If I was a little less honest, it would be easy to skip paying the subscription entirely. I generally use their apps now to find and try new shows, then download them to Plex once I know I like a show (so I'm not burning b…

This is fair but is your average person setting up plex servers? My guess is no.

No, but my tech-illiterate father is now setting up fire TV sticks with Kodi and plugins using Youtube guides for him and my step-siblings.

The whole "are the normies capable of this" argument has turned into an arms-race against Youtube/FB for easy setup guides.

That said, yes, the number of people they'd loose over shitty interfaces is probably kinda small, but I'd argue that as guides, youtube vids, and even all-in-one seedboxes become more available, that population is gonna grow. All it takes is some streamer to lay out the current process.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#157

Post by nonameiguess »

wffurr wrote: post #72
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately any company that makes money is not a tech company because pure technology on its own does not make a business. "X makes money, therefore they are not a tech company" seems rather oversimplified in the same way "X is a tech company" is oversimplified. Actually, it seems oversimplified to the point of maybe not being so useful. I think the way most people would define "tech company," if they were pressed…

There's a third category that you're missing, and it's where the definition gets real blurry. There are companies that effectively use technology to outcompete (or "disrupt") incumbent companies in a market. Amazon in retail, Netflix in media, Craigslist for classifieds, Uber for taxis, etc. It seems as if many existing companies, like Cadbury's perhaps, aren't able to effectively re-work their business models with t…

We used to have a better word for companies doing things like the Amazon Marketplace: eCommerce. But now that AWS is most of their business, they're "tech" because cloud infrastructure is a computing technology they directly sell.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#159

Post by websap »

cletus wrote: post #148

Here's the framework I use: "tech companies" are those where tech still plays a significant factor in the growth of the company such that it's important to an executive level. Example: Google is still a tech company. As much as some might view search as "solved" (just like it was when Google was founded I might add), search continues to get better. Tech still plays a significant role in the actual core business (ie a…

> serving several thousand VODs and that problem is solved

You're kidding right? You think this problem is solved? Try using HBO.

A tech company is any company that understands it can leverage technology effectively to run a more efficient organization. They treat tech as the way to solve problems rather than throwing people at the problem.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#160

Post by tapoxi »

websap wrote: post #159
cletus wrote: post #148

Here's the framework I use: "tech companies" are those where tech still plays a significant factor in the growth of the company such that it's important to an executive level. Example: Google is still a tech company. As much as some might view search as "solved" (just like it was when Google was founded I might add), search continues to get better. Tech still plays a significant role in the actual core business (ie a…

> serving several thousand VODs and that problem is solved You're kidding right? You think this problem is solved? Try using HBO. A tech company is any company that understands it can leverage technology effectively to run a more efficient organization. They treat tech as the way to solve problems rather than throwing people at the problem.

Could you clarify? I subscribe to HBO Max and it works fine.
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