Does YouTube see Netflix as competition? How do they compare and contrast as online streaming video services? Pros and cons of each? Thoughts on which company will likely be more successful in the near future? Will they ever come head-to-head in a pricing war in any of their services?
Um, I'm confused. How do these two streaming services have anything in common with each other? Netflix offers large amounts of movies and TV shows on an unlimited basis for $8 a month. While Youtube charges $2.99 on rentals for all of the films and TV shows they offer, and yet even with Youtube Red now available, they still don't have a pay by monthly streaming service. Amazon and Hulu on the other hand, do, and they would be in much more direct competition with Netflix. Also, something that none of these other services do that Youtube does is allow every day people to upload their own content, no matter how high quality or low quality it is. And that has made Youtube completely its own unique market that only a handful of other smaller sites have attempted to compete with. – Jonathan Leiter9 years ago
I have to agree. Unless youtube changes their model and content or has plans to that I'm not aware of, I'm not really seeing it. – Tatijana9 years ago
Yeah, I agree that YouTube offers a creative platform while Netflix does not, and though Netflix is an extremely popular streaming site, people will use other platforms. Though I know there are sites like Dailymotion, YouTube seems to be way more prominent than other sites that operate as primarily hosting videos. Maybe comparing Netflix to the sites Jonathan Leiter suggested, Amazon or Hulu, would be more compatible and easier because the services are similar? – emilydeibler9 years ago
I disagree with the other posters. I DO think these two services are rapidly approaching each other. First, all entertainment venues are competing for eyeballs. Traditional broadcast TV will often point out that now not only is it in competition with cable TV and video games, but ratings are also down because the market is further fractionalized by streaming services. As for these two big companies, Youtube has begun offering full length movies, both free and for rent on a pay-per-stream basis. Netflix, once primarily the domain of feature films has been moving toward shorter, episodic television as its bread-and-butter, even going so far as launching its own original series. Some of these are hour long programs, some are shorter, half hour programs, many are even shorter than that. It's first success story was reviving Arrested Development at an average runtime of less than 20min per episode. While Netflix is more directly in competition with Amazon and Hulu at this time, Youtube is not to be discounted. – Eric9 years ago