Amazon has added a ton of content to its Prime Instant Video service over the last few months, and that may have put Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on the offensive.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hastings took a not-so-subtle dig at Amazon by describing their Prime video service as a “confusing mess.” He also reiterated that Netflix spends more on content, and that has resulted in Netflix actually having much more content that its competitors.
Here’s the relevant excerpt:
In the U.S., our content budget is about three times [Amazon’s], and we’ve got about three times more content. And what our customers tell us is they want Netflix to have more content, not to have two-thirds less at a lower price. That’s not that interesting a proposition for them. [Amazon has its Prime membership service] and it’s really about low-cost shipping, but why is video in there? It’s kind of a confusing mess.
We can do a better user experience on video because it’s our only business. The way we do algorithms to choose which content is shown to you is much better than Amazon’s, much better than Hulu’s. They’ve got talented teams, but they’re doing a lot of other things and we’re focused on this one area.
Them fightin’ words.
Hastings main point: Netflix is all about streaming video, and because we’re focused on that one thing, we can do it better. Not sure how that argument stacks up with Hulu, but oh well.
As I mentioned above, Amazon has been pretty busy adding content to their Prime service. In the past few weeks, they’ve inked deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and EPIX. According to Amazon, the service now boasts over 22,000 titles.
[WSJ via CNET]