We don't have access to the alternate universe where this didn't happen. But Netflix was king of streaming -- other services had to bring themselves up in order

We don't have access to the alternate universe where this didn't happen. But Netflix was king of streaming -- other services had to bring themselves up in order to avoid being killed off by Netflix promoting their own content above those of other providers. If Netflix had made it clear that they were not going to compete in content, then maybe those services would not have to exist. Then again, maybe the move in this direction was inevitable; if the FTC had put its foot in to get something like the consent decree [1] with movie theaters and studios, then we would probably be in a world where streaming services had to differentiate on the quality of their streaming, platform support, application, funding model, etc. instead of just basically competing on the content, while steadily getting worse at everything else. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....