Seven-years and three-months later, Arrested Development is finally back. Season 4 starts streaming May 26^th, 2013 on Netflix.

Netflix announced that it no longer plans on spinning off its DVD rental-by-mail service into a separate company named Qwikster. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings posted the following on the company blog:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.

I wonder if this reversal has anything to do with the stock’s decline since the original split announcement. For fun, I decided to crunch some (simple) numbers. Netflix announced the Qwikster split on September 19 when the stock opened at 158.27. The last trading day before this new announcement was October 7 when the stock was valued at 117.21. That works out to ~26% devaluation since the original announcement.

Netflix Stock [2011.09.19 - 2011.10.07]

Google

I just read the following quote by The Angry Drunk via a link from Daring Fireball:

While the Netflix changes are certainly annoying, and the messaging was less than stellar, we need to make sure to remember where the blame ultimately lies — with the content providers. Until they decide to get with the program content distributors like Netflix and Apple will always be at their mercy and customers will continue to suffer.

Let me just fix that last sentence real-quick:

Until they decide to get with the program content distributors like Netflix and Apple will always be at their mercy and honest, paying customers will continue to suffer.

Everytime I see a Disney commercial advertising how a movie will only be available for a limited time before going into the vault, I have to wonder how much longer that trick will work. I doubt even honest customers will continue to wait for the next timed vault release instead of simply finding a torrent and downloading it.

Note: I do not condone piracy, but in situations like this, I understand why some choose to do so.