What's written on the can reads "please don't sue us, we're not a monopoly, and we will not gouge users".

On the other hand Netflix will make its subscribers fund everything without reducing their income, and will not give these subscribers at least half of that content, because, why not?

Your Netflix bill is about to skyrocket and there's no guarantee you'll have access to those titles.

> I guess you are in the US.

I am not, and WB was available via local options here (Southern European country).

For me who isn't a Netflix customer (the group which is larger than the group of people who have Netflix, obviously), the choice gets less.

And obviously anti-trust regulation doesn't care about the amount of choices for Netflix customers specifically, it cares about amount of choices for consumers at large, which will decrease with this change.

I think it's unlikely to change because most likely the content was not available for legal reasons, not technical. That's why for example when they re-release some shows they have to switch out to completely different music – the rights were not cleared in the first place and it'd be a huge hassle to go back and negotiate with every rightholder

I don’t know what do you mean by “most of the rest of the world” but it’s widely available in the American continent and Europe coverage will be almost complete in the next month(s):

https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/hbo-max-nears...

Netflix acquiring WB’s content will not necessarily lead to all of it being available for streaming to you in any given country. Content licensing is complicated, to put it mildly.

> more choice and greater value for me

That will exactly follow Netflix's price hikes.

As in "value for money", they silenced the latter part :D

But Netflix content breadth and quality varies a lot from country to country. There's not one Netflix.

Netflix buying WB doesn't mean that licensing immediately becomes available worldwide.

Netflix can provide its own content everywhere around the globe because they are the sole owner of it. The distribution rights to WB properties outside of the US will belong to completely different legal entities (even if those entities have WB in them).

So when they say "Consumers", it should really have been "Netflix Customers", as for everyone else there is less choice, only already paying Netflix users get more content.

I think it will.

Now they don't have to go negotiate for every WB content item. As it stands, subscribers might or might not get WB things, same as all the other IP holders that are playing hard to get. Otherwise, they might have to contract some seasons of a show from one holder and some from another, and maybe not at all sometimes.

Maybe they mean more content will be produced, which I believe. But I'd also argue that we really don't need more content on Netflix, we need higher quality. Netflix is drowning in a sea of mediocrity to the point where I have almost given up on investing in a new show because almost all of them reek of lazy writing and good-enough-but-not-outstanding direction. There are exceptions, but they are damn hard to find.

More choice as in “more revenue streams from which to create shareholder value.”

That is, maybe, until they gate keep the WB content beyond additional premiums.