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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Netflix will end up buying Roku, since Netflix's competitors have TV boxes. I suspect that might make things even more fragmented.

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That makes no sense. Roku was born out of Netflix. Why would they buy them now after making the decision years ago not to entire the consumer hardware market?

I don't think Netflix will buy them, unless they need to as a defensive move.

That said, I could see an argument where originally they didn't want to own a hardware platform, so that they wouldn't be competing with other hardware companies that they are trying to convince to integrate their service.

At this point they are ubiquitous enough they might be more comfortable with it.

It appears to be the only notable player not owned by a competitor. I assume Netflix talks internally about whether that's an issue or not. Perhaps the market is different now than it was when you say they decided to forgo the space.

The reason they spun off Roku was precisely because of this reason, though: they realized that being tied to a platform could hinder Roku's adoption, so they spun it off so it could be independent. And in my opinion, being independent and focused entirely on the user experience is why Roku has been as successful as it has been.

Netflix spun off Roku for exactly the opposite reason. They wanted other vendors to distribute the Netflix app and didn’t want to be seen as competitors with hardware vendors.

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