> whether or not Netflix derives value from their relationship with Apple, or not
I think that's a very different question than whether or not Apple has a strong argument that Netflix ought to pay them for that value. As an example, Apple extracts value from its customers who sign up for Netflix on its platform. But Apple is not paying any of that money back to its customers, and I doubt it would try to argue that it has an obligation to do so.
The way I see it is:
- Apple customers pay Apple for strong hardware and a vibrant platform that supports their favorite content/apps.
- Developers pay Apple for support/moderation on the app store.
I don't see the loose ends here where Netflix owes Apple anything beyond maintenance costs. Of course both Apple and Netflix benefit from each other. But the argument that Apple is providing Netflix a service by giving them access to those customers twists the relationship that Apple should have with its customers, sets up a bad incentive structure for the company, and feels very analogous to the kind of double-dipping behavior that we called out with ISPs.
The fact that Netflix gets value from Apple's relationship with its own user base does not create some kind of extra obligation for Netflix. Sometimes people/companies do things that happen to benefit other companies as a side effect of selling a product. It doesn't immediately mean everyone else who benefits is obligated to pay them money.
> The same could be said of AWS. Amazon didn't create it solely for Netflix's sake.
I don't think that's analogous at all. Netflix is directly in the category of customer that AWS is designed to serve. AWS is a hosting service that is sold to Netflix and to companies like Netflix, companies that needs hosting.
On the other hand, iOS does not exist for app developers, it exists for consumers. It's a weird perversion of that relationship to treat Netflix like they're a customer. Consumers are the customers.
Plenty of companies invert that relationship (Facebook, Google, etc); those are products where advertisers are the customer and consumers are a product that is given a benefit in the form of a free service. Apple (often to its credit) went a different direction. But it doesn't now get to pretend that it's in both positions at the same time :)
An analogous situation between AWS and iOS would be if Amazon started charging me as a consumer for access to Netflix's servers in addition to charging Netflix for hosting costs, and if AWS then argued that this was a fair price because I was benefiting from Netflix's increased performance on their servers.
> Many ISPs have a local monopoly over broadband access.
ISP monopolies made the problem worse, but their arguments about Netflix paying their "fair share" would have been disingenuous even if they were not monopolies. Customers paid ISPs for access to websites, there was nothing "fair" about ISPs trying to double-dip and charge companies and consumers twice for the same service.
Similarly, Apple customers (the people who buy its hardware and subscribe to its cloud services) pay Apple for access to the market it created. It's not unfair for Netflix to profit off of that market without compensating Apple, because Apple is already being compensated by its real customers. For an Apple exec to argue that its customer base is a service they provide to other companies is a perversion of that relationship. And pretty selective, because again, it's not like Apple is reducing prices or paying out parts of its Netflix profits to consumers for the value they provide Apple by forming that market. At least Facebook is free.
Outside of basic maintenance costs for the stuff jacurtis mentioned, stuff that's necessary to keep the app store free to access: "credit card processing, and approval into the App Store (plus according to a comment in this email, it sounds like they keep Netflix in the App Store promotion rotation as "free" ad-space)", what is Apple providing for Netflix that hasn't already been paid for by consumers?
That's the analogy I see with the ISPs: not the monopoly stuff necessarily, more the illogical feeling that multiple different parties are somehow simultaneously responsible for paying Apple multiple times for the same service or else they're freeloading.
Of course, ultimately Apple will try to extract as much value as possible out of their position, they're a company, that's what they do. They will charge Netflix because they can. But as consumers and onlookers, we don't have to pretend that they have a moral argument or buy into their public justifications about why they have the setup that they have. Netflix is not freeloading on Apple and Apple is not providing a fantastic well-priced service for developers; Apple is exploiting a position of power that allows them to charge both customers and developers twice for the same product (market access).