Posted on 07/20/2021 5:28:34 AM PDT by gattaca
Amazon Web Services delivers almost all filmed media in the United States to your screen of choice. How are they leveraging that power?
When Amazon announced that it would buy mini-major movie studio MGM in an $8.45 billion deal, I surmised that the real goal here was to raise the cost of acquiring filmed entertainment for its competitors, making Amazon’s bundled Prime Video option look more attractive. I also nodded to the fact that Amazon is a competitor in streaming video and theatrical movie production, while also being a distribution network for streamers. Amazon also sells other streaming services through its website, and through Fire TV, an Amazon device that makes streaming video available. This simultaneous negotiation and competition can create leverage for Amazon in its dealings with rivals, and moves the company closer to taking a cut out of every economic transaction.
But there’s another side to this: No major streaming service actually delivers its product without the assistance of Amazon. That’s true of the major U.S. movie studios as well. And once you understand the totality of Amazon’s role in entertainment distribution, you begin to see its encroachment into entertainment content in a whole new light.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader in cloud computing services. A large segment of the internet runs on AWS servers (about 32 percent in 2020), and the critical nature of this infrastructure is apparent whenever something goes wrong. When you look just at the digital distribution of video, AWS’s dominance grows even further.
AWS is the back-end provider for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, HBO Max, Discovery+, and of course, Amazon Prime.
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect.org ...
“And all of this plays together, making it impossible to run a streaming service or movie company without paying Amazon. “
Except they can move to Microsoft cloud services whenever they want to. Or Oracle. Or IBM. etc.
Yes.
MS and Google offer cloud services to compete with Amazon.
The move is technically difficult, but it can be done.
I banned Amazon about a dozen years ago. However, when I purchase something online it still might come in an Amazon box. Sneaky, sneaky. That’s very telling.
Isn’t Google cloud just as bad playing the Big Brother role?
Yes.
So stop watching perhaps?
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