> Can you imagine the power of a single monthly subscription that gave you immediate access to films, TV shows, music, video games, streamed live events, etc.?

> Can you imagine the power of a single monthly subscription that gave you immediate access to films, TV shows, music, video games, streamed live events, etc.? Do you think Netflix can match that with its proprietary approach? The company will be forced to open up its own system, or face inevitable decline, perhaps even obsolescence. The author does not understand media distribution and has this exactly backwards. Netflix did want to be the single monthly subscription, but the content rightsholders would never allow it because it cedes all the distribution control to Netflix. The last good deal Netflix got was the Starz deal in 2008 when the studios still underestimated the future of streaming. After that it was a steady downward trend, and Netflix realized that as a middle man they had no future, so they entered a race to become HBO (by producing their own content) faster than HBO (and all the other major content rightsholders) could build their own distribution. The idea that Netflix is somehow "proprietary", and the other examples from other industries are "open standards" is specious gobbledygook. You have to look at specifics. For instance, Netflix doesn't make devices, they integrate with smart TVs and OTT boxes which absolutely are open standards as much as any of the other examples. And even within the Netflix bubble they do license others content, so it's not all "proprietary", but on the other hand it's an app, not a platform, so you can't really compare it to a payments network or an operating system like Microsoft Windows—that is what Roku, Samsung and Apple provide, not Netflix. The whole article is just another in a long tail of naive consumer complaints, decrying how things "should" be from their perspective, but in total ignorance of the incentives and systems that lead to things to being the way they actually are. (full disclosure: I co-founded and led a streaming company from 2007-2016)