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this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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I disagree, I preferred when all the shows and movies were on netflix, and I like that all of my games are on Steam. Opening the market creates exclusives, which are bad imho
Mate. Trusting a company not to shaft you when you have no alternatives is never a good idea. It is actually really bad.
Companies do not act towards the benefit of the customer. It is always towards a better bottom line, and those decisions many times do not have your best interest at heart. If you have no choices, the companies have no incentive to make your experience any better. (see Internet Explorer). Competition is always a good thing. It forces companies to be better. The key word there is forces because they will not do it on their own.
Sadly, often when you appear to have choices, you still don't have a choice. The type of competition that practically benefits users rarely exists and profit-maximizing businesses actively work to reduce or eliminate it. In the long run competition in a market disappears via consolidation - the act of the winners acquiring the losers. And so you end up dealing with one or several companies, whether you trust them or not.
With that said, the author of the article is obviously out of their mind or an active Google shill.
It's unfortunately not happy days and rainbows in "competition land" either though. It usually just leads to a race to the bottom in the pursuit of infinite profit growth, forcing them to lower quality in a never ending downwards spiral, leaving the customer with shit on all sides.
Pretty sure early Netflix was competing with outright piracy, so they had to keep their prices down and their service convenient. Actually that is probably the best state for a digital market to be in, where there is a vibrant piracy community keeping companies honest with both their prices and services. ~~~~Because fuck the law when all it does is fuck me.~~~~
Not true. It can also end in a cartel.
At least those are illegal (although perhaps not enforced well enough)
You preferred a time that never existed eh? Me too.
You disappoint Paul McGann. Netflix never had all the shows or movies. There was a time when they were the only game in town. But even that is being viewed through heavily nostalgia by you. And not in any way. Objectively.
There's no reason we could not have a standard interface and way of content delivery with multiple stores as a back end. The problem isn't the stores and the stores are not ultimately used to blame for exclusives. That is all on the rights holders. It is well within the right holders. Ability to reject exclusivity.
As opposed to everything being exclusive to one platform, like you seem to prefer???
Well I mean, you'd only have to get that one account then. Not 20 different ones. Easy peasy. However, that platform must then be extraordinary benevolent and pretty much non-profit for that to end well.
And how often has that been the case so far?
Yes, that's the point.
I understand his point though. It should be Netflix with every show vs Hulu with every show vs Max with every show. So the competition is on distribution quality and price, not content.
In the 1930's studios owned the movie theaters so you could only watch a 20th Century Fox movie at a 20th Century theatre. Vertical integration of content with distribution was made illegal. But of course tech companies ignored the law based on the premise that doing an illegal action with a computer isn't illegal because the law against vertical monopolies didn't technically say "streaming service" in 1940.
Several years ago, the law was repealed and Disney+ launched a few months later. This started the rush of vertical monopolies of content with distribution that we live with today.
The issue is the platforms aren't competing, because shows can exclusively be on one platform only and you need to be subscribed to watch it, so you end up with the current landscape of services that instead of competing with each other make it so you need all of them to get a full experience. Alternative playstores might face similar issues, but you don't need to pay to download multiple stores and apps don't have exclusivity deals to one app store
"don't put all your eggs in one basket" is old wisdom from well before computers even existed
Steam is only good because of who currently runs things. If he steps down shit could go to hell on steam.