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by Comevius 1427 days ago
Compromising your products and services for profit is a slippery slope under normal circumstances, but streaming is a rather competitive market. What Netflix is doing is baffling, they are in the middle of a race for dominance.

I think Netflix was too late to realize that they need to become an entertainment company like Disney or HBO and not a tech company, because that's Amazon and the world is too small for another Amazon, just as it is too small for another Google. It doesn't matter how good their CDN is or how good they are at writing JavaScript libraries, they will keep losing subscribers if there is nothing to subscribe for.
2 comments
the_biot 1427 days ago
I always hate to see it as well, when companies degrade their product for the tiniest bit of extra profit. It's the classic one-less-olive-in-airline-meal story. Remember when a Big Mac was actually a big burger? It's a very small burger, these days.

Netflix is somewhat ahead of this slippery slope here, in that when they started producing their own content it was third-rate from the start, very much quantity of quality. They were always going to fall off a cliff once subscriber numbers stopped growing, since eventually existing subscribers will tire of the crap they try to force-feed them, and decide the service isn't worth the price.

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qeternity 1427 days ago
> Remember when a Big Mac was actually a big burger? It's a very small burger, these days.

And yet in spite of this, McDonald's Corp has never been more valuable.

See my point?

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chucksta 1426 days ago
And it has also never been more synonymous with garbage food which makes you feel bad. Just because its profitable and "good for the company" doesn't mean it's good for product image and users.
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Comevius 1427 days ago
You can get away with it when everyone is doing it. Most of the food and beverage industry compromises quality or quantity in one way or another. McDonald's is actually one of the better ones, they compromise the quantity, but otherwise they are consistent, innovative and good at observing customer trends and behaviors.
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qeternity 1427 days ago
> What Netflix is doing is baffling

I wouldn't agree with this, and apparently neither would they. But none of this answers my question.

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Comevius 1426 days ago
Trading customer goodwill for chump change is rarely the winning strategy, but it's sure a losing strategy in the middle of the streaming wars when other companies are trying their best to cater to their customers.
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