[mark_l_watson]

As long as they are splitting the company, why not in three pieces, with a separate movie rating/recommendation service? That way both the separate DVD rental business and the streaming business could make web service calls to the recommendation service. As long as people "joined" their identities on Quickster and Netflix streaming, then customers of both services get better recommendations.

The "third company" might also make revenue from additional companies wanting a high quality recommendation system. Doing recommendation well is very difficult.