Ask HN: If Amazon Prime's video service grew large, would AWS kick Netflix off?

by ScotterC on 4/7/2012, 3:38 AM with 5 comments

A thought experiment: I don't think this would be the mission of Mr. Vogel but if Amazon Prime's video streaming service was seen as a large possible profit, would AWS cease service to Netflix to gain the competitive advantage it would entail?

  • by ig1 on 4/8/2012, 2:33 PM

    No, Amazon already hosts many competitors on their platform. For example Heroku on AWS and many book resellers on it's marketplace platform.

  • by thematt on 4/11/2012, 7:59 PM

    Absolutely not, for two reasons:

    1. AWS is a far bigger growth opportunity for Amazon than their video service, it wouldn't make sense to sacrifice the former in favor of the latter.

    2. Even if Amazon did kick them off, it's not like Netflix will simply fold up shop, they'll just go somewhere else to get their storage and processing power, so from Amazon's perspective why not keep that revenue stream?

  • by staunch on 4/7/2012, 5:12 AM

    Isn't it more of a competitive advantage to have your competitor paying a good portion of their revenues to you?

    If anything Amazon might start playing harder ball with Netflix. They don't seem to be a very vicious company though, so even that is unlikely.

  • by tar on 4/7/2012, 5:00 AM

    I don't think that would ever happen. Netflix's is very bandwidth-heavy service which I think brings in a lot of revenue for Amazon.