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Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

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121–130 of 660 posts

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#121
post #73

I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.

All of that is way cheaper (currently) than cable. The biggest problem is finding what you want. Need a TV Guide for streaming, so I can search for say "The Martian", and it would tell me "This is on netflix in your country", or "this isn't available on subscription, but you can rent it on amazon for x.xx or buy it on apple tv for y.yy"

The biggest problem for me is that my local cable company is the cheapest/best internet provider. So, no, it's not cheaper for me than cable. Internet without cable is almost the cost of the "bundle". (it's evil) I just have cable on 1 of 4 TVs, but still.

Also you can't get most streaming content on cable, or the sports content I get on cable without 4 streaming services (ESPN+, Peacock, Paramount+ & Hulu).

So I've got a cable package w/ sports + a couple streaming services. Sometimes I'll pick one up for a month or 2 and drop it just for something I want to see. Sometimes I rent something from Amazon.

It's just a mess.

But the search is pretty easy. My Rokus, Amazon sticks, or even cable box search fine for me.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#122

I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.

I remember when a Netflix subscription was like having Blockbuster inside your living room. Now its mostly just Netflix originals which aren't necessarily bad but maybe not worth it's own subscription every month.

> I remember when a Netflix subscription was like having Blockbuster inside your living room.

That's a great exaggeration. There was never a time when you could name a film and expect it to be on Netflix to stream.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#123
post #107
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and have you noticed how the industry doesn't really want you to watch old stuff? Obviously they want to keep peddling new movies and series, so it does make sense, but I think it should be easier to find old classic movies. I often have to resort to torrents for this reason alone.

But surely it makes more sense to peddle old movies and TV shows because you've already made them. Isn't that why content creation is so lucrative - you make it once and then sell it for years and years?

But at least for Netflix, they didn't make the old content. If you watch content made by the streaming site, it likely costs them less.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#124

Decline is far too charitable to Facebook and Netflix. They need to cease to exist. Any product that Facebook makes produces -99% of value for humanity.

The question isn't which company twists your undies the most, it's which is most likely to actually decline.

Then the answer is to hasten their decline to a complete downfall by not using or working any of them.

Unless of course pushing buttons on an orange site is going to change things...

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#126

Amazon, Apple, and Google are each well-entrenched and also have a good bit of cash and patents available to pivot or crush competitors if necessary. Plus if broken up (e.g. by gov't antitrust regs, etc.) each would have multiple sustainable businesses that could survive independently of the main company. Netflix will buy/be bought. Much like cell phone carriers, ISPs, and CATV companies, consolidation will leave onl…

Facebook (Meta) the company is a lot more than Facebook the social media network. Meta owns WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the biggest social networks, that are ubiquitous with younger generations. It does not matter that Facebook is associated with old people, because Facebook also owns the places where all the young people are at.

FWIW, I don't think Instagram is super popular with the Tiktok generation, and WhatsApp's monetization strategy is still unproven.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#127

Facebook is currently ahead, but I wonder how much of that is perception. There is a lot of media about how Facebook is evil, but that is mostly from a pretty small circle of media and political people, that Facebook is naturally in opposition to. Facebook also owns instagram and whatsapp as well. But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily. Instagram is also used very heavily. Amazon has threats from other E-…

Amazon / Google I think will stay strong due to their infrastructure in cloud technology. Amazon has the physical delivery infrastructure as well, which doesn't have a great competitor yet.

Apple is currently doing fine with their devices. I think the health industry will adopt some of their tech soon (like the apple watch) to get some of that sweet, sweet healthcare / insurance money

That leaves the "worst" of the group to either Facebook or Netflix.

I haven't heard much about what Netflix is doing, but things seem to be going generally okay so far.

Facebook has extremely negative news all over the media on seemingly both the tech and political side. For example, malicious targeting of children and their platform being used for fake news / propaganda. On the tech side, I don't have confidence in their current, future, or past projects such as Oculus or their extreme hype around the metaverse.

For these reasons (by default and past/present/future speculation) given the wording on this question, I think Facebook is the obvious "loser."

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#128

I have loads of friends who started to cancel their netflix subs and went back to piracy because they grew tired of searching for a way to watch something legally. Now its disney, hbo, prime, whatever. Screw all of this.

Before, we used piracy because the media wasn't easily accessible (physical media). I now see piracy having an uptick in the future because the media is all paywalled. Five years ago, anything you wanted to watch was on Netflix, Hulu, or TPB. With the success of those platforms, all the IP holders have started their own streaming platforms which is great, but it's lead to a massive fragmentation of the market. No one is going back to paying those cable prices of $120+ a month for content by signing up for all these services, so piracy it is.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#129
I'd say Netflix as it stands today. Not enough differentiation, and their catalog continues to skew more and more towards Netflix Originals which constitute a pretty "mixed bag" IMO. If they continue to drop more and more "external" content, which more often makes up the stuff I go in wanting to see, I could see cancelling their service.

OTOH, if they keep producing enough of their own content, that is good enough, they might keep me around. For example, if they come out with another show as good as, say, Bojack Horseman, every so often then I would likely keep my subscription.

Time will tell, I suppose.

Re: Poll: Which FAANG is the most likely to decline in the years ahead?

#130

Why do people hate Netflix? I'm out of the loop on that...

I don't think people who are voting for netflix hate it. It's just the smaller of the bunch and the one which faces most competition. So, it's a reasonable guess.

If we see any decline, which is unlikely, it would probably be facebook or netflix in my opinion. Tiktok is bigger than facebook right now and they have a very bad reputation. Maybe they will make it big with the metaverse thing, but it's a huge gamble.

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