

Enough Waiting — It’s Time for Amazon to Buy Netflix - hshah
http://gigaom.com/2009/12/26/enough-waiting-its-time-for-amazon-to-buy-netflix/

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philwelch
Actually I think Netflix should buy Redbox. It's obvious how to put the
business models together, and hell, even the colors are the same.

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elblanco
This actually makes a ton more sense. The business models fit almost like a
glove.

Amazon and Netflix seem too disparate to be the same entity, they are more
sales partner material.

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kellishaver
I think the sales tax issue is a big one, but I'm not sure it's really _that_
big.of a deciding factor for most consumers. I've been paying sales tax at
Amazon forever (I'm in KY) and it hasn't discouraged me from using any of
their services. I go with Amazon for the convenience and the fact that I can
often find free shipping offers from them on many itmes, which more than
offsets the amount of sales tax I have to pay.

That said, I could be entirely wrong. :) If I didn't live in a small town that
was at least an hour away from all major retailers other than walmart, I might
be using Amazon a lot less.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on their sales in states that
pay sales tax vs. states that don't, provided they also took into account the
overall spending patterns of the people in those states.

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cloudkj
Amazon strategically places its warehouses just outside of the most populated
states. Imposing sales tax would be mean they immediately lose a ~10% pricing
margin on sales to states like California. That's quite a big impact.

If you look carefully at the way prices are set on some of Amazon's items,
they actually set the price at just below the list price + sales tax for some
populated state, such as California. So at first glance the price will seem to
be higher than a competitor's, but it's actually cheaper since the competitor
(i.e. a b&m retailer like Wal-Mart) has to charge sales tax.

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cloudkj
For more perspective, check out this timely article:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/business/27digi.html?ref=b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/business/27digi.html?ref=business)

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kellishaver
Interesting. Thanks!

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kqr2
Does Netflix want to get bought out? The article doesn't really address that.

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qeorge
Netflix is public, so its not necessarily their choice. Resisting a buyout
(even a hostile takeover) rarely goes well (e.g., Yahoo).

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kqr2
In the past, Netflix had a poison pill policy to prevent a hostile takeover:

[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5057/is_200403/ai_n1...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5057/is_200403/ai_n18418620/?tag=content;col1)

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marze
Apple will buy Netflix.

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blhack
Please pardon my ignorance, but why would Apple buy netflix? It doesn't really
fit with their brand.

(This is an opinion)

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potatolicious
Not to mention, Apple is not in the business of physical content distribution
(i.e., mailing DVDs), and already has a very popular streaming product
available.

They could definitely do with the user tracking and recommendations side of
Netflix, but that alone doesn't justify a takeover.

