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This the end of innovation in online videos: "When companies like Netflix, which today closed with a market cap of almost $158 billion, can’t necessarily get en
by pascalxus 8y ago
This the end of innovation in online videos: "When companies like Netflix, which today closed with a market cap of almost $158 billion, can’t necessarily get enough negotiating power to ensure that consumers have direct access to them, no startup can ever hope to compete. America may believe in its entrepreneurs, but its competition laws have done nothing to keep the terrain open for them. Those implications are just beginning."
Sounds like this is the end of TV and Online video watching as we know it. Oh well, time to start reading books again ~ they'll never be able to take that from us.
- murph-almighty 8y agoAll books are now sold with a small display attached that gives you a URL. The book is magnetically sealed until you take out your phone, navigate to that URL, and watch an ad.
- aogl 8y agoOh goodness! This actually sounds like something that could literally happen. Given how things are going..
- justinlink 8y agoquick patent it!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mattnewton 8y agoSounds like a fun way to spend an afternoon figuring out how to defeat the lock.
- MrLeap 8y agoMy angle grinder says hi.
- wolfgang42 8y agoIt's a flimsy plastic lock and all you need is a cheap pair of snips, but now you're under arrest for "defeating anti-piracy protections."
- HillaryBriss 8y agoyeah. yet, the consumer side demand for such content is well established now. i can't help but wonder what kinds of workarounds consumers will invent (against all regulations and attempts to defeat them) to pass that content around. consumers might embrace Netflix's old-school disk-mailing tactics. or maybe Netflix will re-embrace that. or some sort of illegal low power local extended WiFi networks? dunno.
- pascalxus 8y agoactually that's interesting. DVDs may make a comeback. A whole new industry may open up: Taking previously online content (like YouTube videos, perhaps a set of related ones) and compiling them into DVDs that you can binge watch.
- darkstar999 8y agoHopefully blurays!
- manofmanysmiles 8y agoThis type of comment implies you think the world is static. I'm not saying that this good, but what makes you so sure market and social forces won't produce a better model? To me this is just a temporary setback, and a reminder why we need to focus on developing new technologies, like a "truly decentralized internet", blockchain, cryptography, and more. It almost feels like a the death throws of a monster that will do a lot of damage is it goes down, but will ultimately be overthrown by the better forces in the world. Edit: "Truly decentralized internet" is a loaded phrase, so I'll expand a bit. The fact that we see small companies and municipalities beginning to develop their own ISPs is a positive trend in the right direction. Mesh networking has the potential to happen. Most WiFi chipsets in theory support short range mesh, and the gear from Ubiquity and others, not to mention SDR also have this potential. In fact, I'd hypothesis that the basebands in most cell phones have the hardware capability to participate in mesh typologies. The right software could enable some very interesting things. I could be totally wrong here about the HW capabilities. Anyone care to chime in? Layer proper digital identities, and something like TOR as a first class citizen, and you start to get a pretty nice picture.
- ma2rten 8y agoI don't want to be pedantic, but doesn't this comment imply that there will big changes and hence the world is non-static?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- craftyguy 8y agoI was going to reply with some cynical remark about how the hole we are digging is deeper now than ever, and would take radical changes to climb out of, but I really like your positive spin on this. I'll try to consider it from that perspective moving forward.
- jerf 8y agoRemember, we're not meaningfully in a hole "deeper than ever", because there isn't an "ever". As much as it may feel like the Internet has been around forever, this is all new ground, for everybody, and surprises may yet be around the corner. I guarantee you in 2018 that the "FANG" acronym will be out of date. I don't know which of them may or may not be in there, and I don't know who may get added, but the landscape will be different.
- nashashmi 8y agoSometimes a market cap of $158 billion causes everyone to want to get a share of the pie. In other words, if Netflix was not so successful and making so much money, the pipelines would not be so interested in squeezing a dime from that sector.
- rayiner 8y agoIs it? Startups manage to continue to exist on the Google Play Store and on the iOS App Store, even though Apple and Google directly compete with many of their offerings. Consumers basically have just two choices for mobile platform, but somehow that's enough competition to keep the kind of behavior you talk about in check.
- mattnewton 8y agoNone that could ever be an existential threat to the gatekeepers tough; that only happens on the open web. Which is about to be a lot less open.
- rayiner 8y agoMaybe. But it seems good enough. People aren’t clamoring for an alternative in the mobile space for example.
- mattnewton 8y agoI think that’s because the web exists and is accessible on your phone. YC didn’t have to talk to Apple or Google for me to type this on my iPhone.
- SimbaOnSteroids 8y agoDifference is mobile platforms, as their name implies, are not geographically locked. There aren't android or apple only counties, there are however Comcast or Spectrum only counties. This means the cost of switching is too high to really be considered in competition.
- rayiner 8y agoMore than half of households have two or more broadband providers at 25 mbps+; with 5G, the typical household is going to have 2-4 such providers. Two providers isn't a highly competitive market, but it's the same level of competition as exists for mobile platforms, and that seems to work fine.
- dsabanin 8y agoI just fail to see how Comcast or Verizon are going to be selling you their internet connection if you won't be able to connect to the things you want to connect to (like Netflix, iTunes, YouTube) through them. Especially on higher plans, people buy a lot of bandwidth so that they can stream videos, that's how ISPs up-sell to them. If they start throttling, they'll be selling an empty bucket, and it's not going to be very easy. To me it seems like this might just revive competition between ISPs, by separating those who do the shady things and those who don't. I'm curious how this is going to play out, it may not be all bad.
- knowuh 8y agoYou must live in one of the few places in the US where high-speed internet is available through multiple providers. That is definitely not the norm. Most people won't be able to simply switch to the least nasty provider.
- dsabanin 8y agoBut that's my point, it will give a smaller-sized competition more chances to differentiate, since users might start looking for something better.
- falcolas 8y agoWhat smaller competition will be capable of laying copper or fiber to its constituents? Even cities are, in many cases, rendered incapable of providing competition. And, for the record, wireless is not a viable competition for copper, let alone fiber. The available bandwidth by the most cutting-edge offerings is too low and latency is too high.
- xj9 8y agothe hypothetical here is that Comca$t is going to artificially throttle Netflix and give you mandatory free (paid) access to their own streaming platform. all a WISP has to do to compete is offer more bandwidth than the throttle allows with no bandwidth shaping at a competitive price.
- irrational 8y agoIsn't there a new Fahrenheit 451 movie coming out soon?
- fetus8 8y agoYeah, it's an HBO production.
- dhimes 8y agoWith your last sentence you were obviously referring to this... https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
- brad0 8y agoI could see a revival in P2P tech for doing real time video. Who knows, maybe we'll build local networks off the public internet.
- amazon_not 8y agoP2P isn't very useful for real time video.
- DavidVoid 8y agoAce Stream works really well for watching live broadcasts. On demand video would be more difficult though since not everyone is watching the same content at the same time.
- amazon_not 8y agoWhat's the latency like? Live broadcasts are hard enough to keep realtime without mixing in P2P problems like buffering and limited upstreams.
- DavidVoid 8y agoI'm not sure. I believe it's pretty good but I've only ever used it to watch Formula 1 streams (since F1TV most likely won't be available in my country until next year).
- amazon_not 8y agoUnless you compare the latency to a live broadcast, you'll never know how bad the latency is. Most P2P systems are terrible, which makes them pretty useless since you can hear who scored from your neighbor seconds or even minutes before you see it.
- mattlondon 8y agoFYI: innovation can happen outside of the US.
- stephengillie 8y agoIs there any chance that Comcast will stop carrying Google ads? That has to be some quantity of traffic - a few dozen kb on every page load in every browser and app on every network connection. For a 100 kb ad to show 100 times on 5 devices at 100 houses is 500 gb