[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

> What separates a traditional company from a tech company these days really just revolves around how much the company values tech.

I dunno; netflix has nice tech, but it's hardly without competition. I don't think you could even consider their tech a differentiator for customers; they could switch onto whatever tech HBO uses and leverage their existing content without subscribers even noticing.

Every large company has a tech component. Why do you think outsourcing data analysis vs doing it in house changes how an outsider should evaluate the business? What matters are why people pay them.

[charlesdm]

They value tech, but Netflix without their proprietary content is just a dumb pipe. In comparison to, say, a telco it's not very different -- nothing more than a commodity.

The tech stack in itself can be cool for an engineer to work on, but business wise it has little value. The only way to progress in this market is to focus on content. That's what makes (or breaks) a service.

[simonh]

>Why do you think outsourcing data analysis vs doing it in house changes how an outsider should evaluate the business?

This is the crux of the matter. Why roll your own tech when you can buy off the shelf?

Off the shelf tech is, by definition, old tech. If you roll your own you can have a new feature, optimisation or bug fix in production the same day it comes out of QA. The lead time for vendor tech can be months, or even years. If you prioritise a new feature likewise you can have your devs working on it the same day it gets green lit. Try that with a vendor. Controlling your own technology stack, sometimes even developing your own dev tooling internally, can be a decisive competitive advantage.

[ghaff]

I wouldn't expect any major studio (which is what most of these companies basically are at this point) to handle their streaming by calling IBM and write a check. On the other hand, implementing a reliable streaming platform--while requiring a lot of developers, ops people, and money--is a fairly well-understood problem at this point.

I expect that a branded streaming-as-a-service platform will absolutely exist at some point relatively soon. But I'm not aware of examples today.

That said, I'll bet on the company with the content rather than the company with an incrementally whiz-bangier streaming platform.

[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

Really? AFAIK MLB's video service powers MLB, HBO, and soon Disney—it's already a reality. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/9/16118694/disney-bamtech-es...

[ghaff]

As I say. Not surprised at all. It's a hard but well-understood problem that applies across a lot of content providers.

[simonh]

But surely you can perceive a difference between MLB, which developed in-house tech that gave them a competitive advantage versus other sports groups and enabled them to build a successful business providing that service to other companies, and the ones that buy in that tech. MLBs investment put them years ahead of their competition in that area.

[ghaff]

I'm not sure how much was the tech. It wasn't all developed in-house anyway; they were a big reference for at least EMC ages ago. But certainly, like a number of the more successful media/entertainment companies, they recognized that technology was important at a time when you couldn't just get it off the shelf.

Today it's less clear that the tech is still as compelling a differentiator relative to the content.

[njarboe]

Major League Baseball is a tech company. Love it.

[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

> Controlling your own technology stack, sometimes even developing your own dev tooling internally, can be a decisive competitive advantage.

That's true generally, though. That doesn't distinguish "tech" companies from "non-tech" companies.

[simonh]

I think it does. If you substantially develop your own technology stack, you're a tech company. It can be a small or large part of your business, but it's still a fact.

[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

So—Walmart is a tech company? I'm fine with this definition, but virtually every valuable company will be a tech company in the near future.

[icebraining]

they could switch onto whatever tech HBO uses and leverage their existing content without subscribers even noticing.

I disagree; subscribers would definitively notice if Netflix lost its global ISP-hosted dynamically-allocated caching network, for example: https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

There's more tech than what's visible on the surface.

[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

Well, I agree their data center technology is impressive, but—again—it's hardly unique. HBO and MLB both serve similar levels of peak traffic with similar quality, though netflix manages to deliver some bitrate at almost all times whereas HBO sometimes hiccups.

[icebraining]

HBO Now has 2M subscribers.

Netflix has 100M.

[dgfgfdagasdfgfa]

I'd be interested if you could demonstrate there's a strong correlation between that and peak traffic—but I suspect things like GOT premiers will be highly competitive with netflix.

Furthermore, this is highly cacheable content. Again, netflix's tech is impressive, but at its core caching is a problem that has been solved and solved again. You aren't going to differentiate yourself by being a dumb pipe.

I highly, highly, highly doubt that netflix's tech is going to be a differentiating factor when people choose them so they can watch Kimmy Schmidt.

[geodel]

Going by the engineering salaries they seem to value tech quite a bit. I haven't heard that Netflix hired a bunch of IT vendors to deliver next-gen delivery platform, the way Sony / Warner Bros etc do.