Netflix Inc. is an American technology & media-services provider, production company, and owner of the streaming service, Netflix. The company is headquartered in Los Gatos, California and was founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California. This is an abridged history of the formation and growth of Netflix, which has grown to become the largest entertainment company in the United States in terms of market capitalization as of 2020.
Netflix launches its website[3] with 925 titles available for rent through a traditional pay-per-rental model (50¢US per rental U.S. postage; late fees applied).[4]
1999
September
Product
Netflix launches its monthly subscription concept.[5]
2000
Company
Netflix offers itself for acquisition to Blockbuster for $50 million; however, Blockbuster declines the offer.[6]
Netflix announces that it reaches 1 million subscribers.[8]
2004
August 11
Competition
Blockbuster launches Blockbuster online to compete with Netflix, offering unlimited DVD rentals at the flat fee of $19.99/month.[9]
2006
September 7
Competition
October 1
Company
Netflix offers a $1,000,000 prize to the first developer of a video-recommendation algorithm that could beat its existing algorithm, Cinematch, at predicting customer ratings by more than 10%.[10] and uses the same 2016 icon
2007
January 15
Product
Netflix announces that it will launch streaming video.[11]
February
Product
Netflix delivers its billionth DVD[12] and begins to move away from its original core business model of mailing DVDs by introducing video on demand via the Internet.
2008
March 12
Competition
Hulu, a competing online streaming service, launches for public access in the United States.[13]
August
Product
Netflix experiences a giant database corruption. This drives it to start moving all its data to the Amazon Web Services cloud. It completes its shift to the cloud by January 2016.[14]
2009
June 12
International
Netflix Originals was launched.
2010
September 22
International
Netflix starts expanding its streaming service to the international market, starting with Canada."[15]
December
Legal
The FCC Open Internet Order bans cable television and telephone service providers from preventing access to competitors or certain web sites such as Netflix.
Netflix launches streaming service in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay
September 8
International
Netflix launches streaming service in Chile and Bolivia
September 9
International
Netflix launches streaming service in Andean region, including Peru and Ecuador
September 12
International
Netflix launches streaming service in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean
September 18
Product
Reed Hastings says in a Netflix blog post that the DVD section of Netflix would be split off and renamed Qwikster, and the only major change would be separate websites for the services.[18] This change would be retracted a month later.
November
Finance
Netflix stock plunges from 42.16/share in July to 9.12/share in November, as 800,000 subscribers quit.[19]
2012
January 9
International
Netflix starts its expansion in Europe, launching in the United Kingdom and Ireland.[20] By September 18 it has expanded to Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.[21]
Netflix starts streaming House of Cards, its first original content.[3]
August 1
Product
Netflix announces a "Profiles" feature that permits accounts to accommodate up to five user profiles, associated either with individuals or themes of their choosing (e.g., "Date Night").
Netflix discovers that Comcast Cable has been slowing its traffic down, and announces that it will pay Comcast to end the slowdown.[25]
September 10
Product
Netflix participates in the "Internet Slowdown" by intentionally slowing down its speeds, announcing its opposition to proposed changes in net neutrality rules that act against net neutrality by giving preferred websites the option to pay telecommunication companies for a guaranteed fast lane, in effect slowing down websites that don't pay for that fast lane.[26]
2015
June 24
Finance
Netflix announces a 7:1 stock split in form of a dividend of six additional shares for each outstanding share, payable on July 14 to stock owners of record at the July 2 close. Trading at the post-split price will start July 15.
July
Finance
Netflix announces that its stock has surged to an all-time high (to almost $100/share), a growth of 574% over the past five years.[27]
September 2
International
Netflix launches streaming service in Japan.
October
Product
Netflix announces that it will raise the price of its standard HD plan to $10 per month, up from $9 per month for recent customers. This price hike will be gradually rolled in, a strategy it calls "un-grandfathering."[28]
2016
January 6
International
At the Consumer Electronics Show, Netflix announces a major international expansion into 130 new territories; with this expansion, the company promoted that its service would now be available nearly "worldwide", with the only notable exclusions including China, and regions subject to U.S. sanctions, such as Crimea (Ukraine), Syria, and North Korea.[29]
January
Product
Netflix announces that it will launch originals targeting kids.[30]
Netflix states that it sends lower quality video to mobile subscribers on AT&T and Verizon's networks for the past 5 years.[33] Some accuse Netflix of hypocrisy on net neutrality.[34]
May
Partnerships
Netflix partners with Univision to broadcast the first season of its original show Narcos - testing whether airing old seasons on traditional TV can lure people to sign up for its service ahead of the next season.[35]
November 30
Product
After years of requests from subscribers, Netflix rolls out an offline playback feature to all of its subscribers in all of its markets.[36]
2017
October
Competition
A study showed that the number of Netflix subscribers now equal that of all the cable subscribers combined; 73% of all US households.[37]
Netflix announced that Friends and The Office will be leaving the platform within the United States to go to other streaming platforms.[clarification needed]
2021
November
Product
Netflix launches its gaming platform Netflix Games, available on Android with 5 games on launch. The company also announces plans to expand its gaming service to iOS.[38]
2022
January
Product
Netflix raises prices again and loses 1 million customers [39]