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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#291

Post by PopAlongKid »

jamroom wrote: post #136
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's not an exaggeration - back when Netflix sent out DVD's by mail it WAS like having a Blockbuster in your living room (since Blockbuster didn't do streaming)

I only have Netflix disc rental (blu-ray, one disc out at a time, costs about $10/month).

The library is huge and goes back decades. There are usually good user reviews at the Netflix web site for guidance. I suspect there are thousands of theatrically released movies that Netflix only offers on disc, not streaming.

In the last ten years, I've rented almost 900 movies (including a few TV shows like Breaking Bad) on disc, so that's well below $2/rental. I live about 50 miles from the nearest distribution center, so turnaround is almost always just two days, because the post office scans the returned disk when I post it, so Netflix sends out the new one the next day, even before they receive my return. They did pull a fast one a few years back by silently stopping outgoing shipments on Saturdays, but I live with it.

Discs have great resolution, often have bonus features, and almost always have closed captioning, which I appreciate more and more as I age. And the credits don't get reduced to a thumbnail on screen so the next show can be promoted. And I don't have to log in, or enable wi-fi on my TV.

I use an old PS3 as my blu ray player, works great with a Logitech remote control, supports HDMI output. I also have a blu-ray external disk drive for my laptop if I'm on the road (only about $100 as I recall).

Since Netflix is primarily responsible for putting Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and various local video stores out of business, I'd be really pissed if they ended the disc rental service.

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

#292

Post by pyb »

phkahler wrote: post #240

This was hard to answer, I had to think carefully about weather I thought each one will decline, or weather I want them to decline. In short IMHO: Amazon - Needs to clean up the 3rd party seller mess, but that will just make them better. They still offer good service. Netflix - They're being replaced (unfortunately) by a bunch of different streaming services so they will never have as full a catalog as they did. Appl…

Apple's issues : lack of new product lines ; seem to be still behind wrt AI

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

#293

Post by slyall »

chronotis wrote: post #207
littlestymaar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But everyone over 30 I know uses Facebook, heavily That's an interesting perspective, I was pretty convinced that facebook was almost dead since all of my friends (in France) have almost completely stopper using it. Well most of us are still casually browsing it every once in a while, but it's far less often than it used to be, and worse: we don't have interactions together on that platform. The last remaining usag…

Midwestern GenX suburban parent here. Nothing important happens in our subdivision (hundreds of homes) without mention of it in the neighborhood's private Facebook group. Our public school district uses a Facebook page as a primary announcement platform. Kids' sports and social groups are all organized as Facebook groups and pages. You cannot escape Facebook if you're a suburban parent in the US.

True but thats 10 minutes per day. Facebook needs everybody to spend hours on them each day.

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

#294

Post by MaxBarraclough »

moonbug wrote: post #274
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured that by inside your living room they were referring to streaming rather than to disc rental. I agree that disc rental services (regardless of provider, in my experience) have very good selections. ̶A̶l̶s̶o̶,̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶U̶K̶,̶ ̶N̶e̶t̶f̶l̶i̶x̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶a̶l̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶.̶ edit: I'm mistaken, they used to. There's just one provider left here that does…

Yes, it did.

Thanks, you're right, I've edited my comment.

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

#295

Post by dhosek »

cam0 wrote: post #179
monkeybutton wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is facing the rise of competing streaming platforms. They're forced into creating their own content because other producers would rather release content on their own platforms and keep all the streaming revenue, rather than license it to Netflix. Streaming video on demand isn't a technical moat that is stopping anyone.

True, but Netflix has gotten really good at this over the past 10 years. They create/fund some great content (and a lot of mediocre/bad content) - kind of similar to a VC fund now that I'm writing this out. They're an integral component of the entertainment industry now.

I was thinking as I was leaving the movie theater over the weekend and saw a poster for some movie billed as an Amazon Studios production that Google and Facebook are the only ones in the FAANG who aren't producing TV/movies. It will be very interesting to see how that progresses over the next decade. I want to believe that the data-driven approach that Netflix and Amazon have taken with their productions won't be the future of entertainment but who knows?

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

#296

Post by greedo »

CountDrewku wrote: post #219
jamroom wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an exaggeration - back when Netflix sent out DVD's by mail it WAS like having a Blockbuster in your living room (since Blockbuster didn't do streaming)

They still mail dvd's. I have a coworker who still uses their mail plan. I kinda considered it silly at first by now I'm thinking this is the way to go. It's relatively cheap compared to renting movies via amazon etc. He gets them fast. Blu-ray quality is better than streaming in some cases.

Blu-ray quality is almost always higher quality than streaming due to the compression used (even for 4K).

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

#297

Post by disambiguation »

Order of decline:

Netflix, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple.

Netflix because their moat isn't strong enough.

Facebook because of monetized-ads model and backlash against social media in general.

Google also because of monetized-ads model and declining quality of search results.

Amazon and Apple are relatively safe IMO.

Amazon is the most at risk from unionization and regulation, potentially breaking up their business verticals. But motivation to do this seems to have subsided after last years congressional hearings.

Apple is really only at risk if people start questioning shelling out thousands for the "shiny new thing".

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

#298

Post by Youden »

CountDrewku wrote: post #219
jamroom wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an exaggeration - back when Netflix sent out DVD's by mail it WAS like having a Blockbuster in your living room (since Blockbuster didn't do streaming)

They still mail dvd's. I have a coworker who still uses their mail plan. I kinda considered it silly at first by now I'm thinking this is the way to go. It's relatively cheap compared to renting movies via amazon etc. He gets them fast. Blu-ray quality is better than streaming in some cases.

> Blu-ray quality is better than streaming in some cases.

The wording here sounded a bit off to me here; I read it as "usually Blu-ray quality is worse or the same as streaming quality but sometimes it's better" while I think what you probably meant (and would make a lot more sense) was "usually streaming is just as good as Blu-ray but sometimes the streaming quality is bad and a Blu-ray is better".

Is the latter what you meant?

Though there is also the possibility that there's a 4K version of a movie available to stream but not released on Blu-ray. Maybe that's what you referred to?

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

#299

Post by jrsj »

RussianCow wrote: post #263
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is already on the way down. They infused all of their new shows with wokeness. Every new show feels like woke concepts are shoehorned in without regard for their impact on the story that's told. Look at the Witcher for an example. Or if you want to see this kind of shift happening over the course of a show, look at Madam Secretary. Season 1 didn't feature any of this crap and showed a strong woman main charac…

I don't totally agree that this is a problem, but to be fair, every network is doing this. Even previously silly and light-hearted TV shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine have become noticeably heavier as they try to shed light on real-world social issues. There's nothing specific to Netflix here.

If it were done well it would be one thing but it’s typically just thinly veiled (DNC) propaganda. Not much to be said on always climbing record fentanyl overdoses, class issues, etc though. If they were actually talking about anything of value to the vast majority of working people instead of rhetoric that’s specifically designed to keep them divided and afraid of each other I wouldn’t complain.

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

#300

Post by dhosek »

artemonster wrote: post #15

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.

There's a site I've come to really appreciate, justwatch.com which is a great way to see who (if anybody) has a particular movie or TV show available. What's nice is that they include the library-based streaming services like Hoopla and Kanopy. I have a 2/month DVD Netflix subscription still the queue for which I use as my master to-watch list, but I'll check the top few movies on the list from time to time to make sure I can't watch them with one of the streaming services I already have.
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