alt Hacker News> I would be very interested to understand why netflix does not go 3/4 route. I would speculate that they get more return from putting money in optimising costs for creating original content, rather than cloud bill.
I invest in Netflix, which means I'm giving them some fast cash to grow that business.
I'm not giving them cash so that they can have cash.
If they share a business plan that involves them having cash to do X, I wonder why they aren't just taking my cash to do X.
They know this. That's why on the investors calls they don't talk about "optimising costs" unless they're in trouble.
I understand self-hosting and self-building saves money in the long-long term, and so I do this in my own business, but I'm also not a public company constantly raising money.
> When I used to compare to aws, only egress at list price costs as much as my whole infra hosting. All of it.
I'm a mere 0,1% of your spend, and I get discounts.
You would not be paying "list price".
Netflix definitely would not be.
Of course netflix is optimising costs, otherwise it would not be a business, I just think they put much more effort elsewhere. They could be using other words, like "financial discipline" :)
My point is that even if I get 20 times discount on egress its still nowhere close, since i have to buy everything else - compute, storage are more expensive, and even with 5-10x discounts from list price its not worth it.
(Our cloud bills are in the millions as well, I am familiar with what discounts we can get)