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Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

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Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#101

Post by drewg123 »

lmkg wrote: post #35
paxys wrote: post #6

While you can make that argument today, Netflix as a company is 24 years old. It got to its current position not by spending $15B/yr on original content (which it can afford to do now) but purely based on a superior and novel tech experience for its users. Of course eventually all discussions of this nature devolve into the intricate definition of "tech company", and in the absence of one that is agreed upon, bringin…

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..

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#103

Post by parasubvert »

munk-a wrote: post #83
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…

Is Dell really a tech company though? Does selling computing hardware really count as tech these days since Apple would definitely end up being a tech company under that definition - even with all the other revenue streams it has I think being one of the largest manufacturers of computing hardware would automatically qualify them. I personally consider "tech companies" to be companies with tech I find interesting to…

Dell takes in a $94 billion dollars in annual revenue across several lines of business and is the 4th biggest “tech” company by revenue after Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet. Facebook is 5th (“tech”?), then Intel, IBM, HP, Cisco.

Only half of that revenue is from “Dude you’re getting a Dell” - PC (and network / peripheral) sales. DellEMC (mostly enterprise storage or hyperconverged hardware and software) top line is $35 billion or so of that number. The rest is VMware and other software / services.

Simple order processing it is not, it’s like saying a Google is “just search and ads”. Somewhat true, but misses a lot.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#104

Post by jefb »

Netflix is absolutely a tech company. Everyone wants to be "tech" because the valuation multiples are higher due to non-linear revenue potential per unit invested. That's pretty much what a "tech" company means today - the cost of acquiring user 1 might be millions, but user 2 is pennies. The only way to push those user n+1 costs so low is with heavy tech automation, which Netflix et al. has in spades.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#105

Post by aidenn0 »

andrewla wrote: post #49

This is attributing much more coherence to Netflix's strategy than could be reasonably assumed. Netflix is still trying to figure out what it is. I think their growth post-DVD was based on the assumption that they would be the clearinghouse for all video content; with Hulu and the further balkanization of the video space, it was clear that this was not going to happen; that Netflix was destined to be one provider amo…

> based on the assumption that they would be the clearinghouse for all video content

Unless they pivoted at lightning speed, I don't think this is true. When I saw the online subscriptions start for Netflix, I, some random person on the street, observed that the moment a white-box streaming service is created, all of the content-owners will have zero incentive to put their content on Netflix.

If I could think of this, then so could Netflix, and sure enough we started seeing netflix buying and producing content of their own pretty quickly.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#106

Post by detaro »

tshaddox wrote: post #98
munk-a wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Dell really a tech company though? Does selling computing hardware really count as tech these days since Apple would definitely end up being a tech company under that definition - even with all the other revenue streams it has I think being one of the largest manufacturers of computing hardware would automatically qualify them. I personally consider "tech companies" to be companies with tech I find interesting to…

I’m confused by how at the very end of your comment you seemingly switch to only considering the tech stack of a company’s online ordering system, which seems to me to be always completely irrelevant to whether a company would be considered a “tech company.”

It's in the context of the first half of the sentence: If "online ordering being interesting" was what made Dell relevant, then the fact that it isn't interesting today is relevant.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#108

Post by pmoleri »

paxys wrote: post #6

While you can make that argument today, Netflix as a company is 24 years old. It got to its current position not by spending $15B/yr on original content (which it can afford to do now) but purely based on a superior and novel tech experience for its users. Of course eventually all discussions of this nature devolve into the intricate definition of "tech company", and in the absence of one that is agreed upon, bringin…

I disagree, I think getting the license to stream the content is a much more difficult problem than the technology to stream it.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#109

Post by nashashmi »

First focus on Netflix started out as emailing dvds. So it was a supply chain company. Then it started going into recommendations. So it was data mining. Now it is streaming. So it is streaming company. Like Real (remember them?) was a streaming company.

Large companies with established proven processes can migrate towards the tech ladder. But small companies cannot become a tech company aka shark tank funded red dress.

Re: Netflix is not a tech company (2019)

#110

Post by netcan »

The "tech company" monicker is increasingly nondescript, but any kind of classification needs context to be useful. These big guys, at present, aren't doing obvious head-2-head competition in well defined market categories. Ford, GM and Toyota are similar to each other that Amazon & Google are not.

To think in classifications, you pick your classification based on the aspect of company you care about.

Netflix's culturalness, financing, hiring/labour practices are more like "tech companies." Their competition, is home entertainment for consumers, and media companies for content. Their business model is basically cable. etc.

In any case, it seems the author goes through all these semantics to notice tha:

"you can access the same service on any device (Netflix, Spotify, Kindle), or the same content on any service (music, books), or both. Content doesn’t stop you switching - unless it’s exclusive, and that’s a totally different budget."

So yep, key point. Media economics is understudied.

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